


Eternity

by imunbreakabledude



Series: Thirst-verse [5]
Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Vampires, blood stuff (bc of the vampires), vampire!eve, vampire!villanelle, writing a summary without spoiling the first two parts is HARD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:26:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25869637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imunbreakabledude/pseuds/imunbreakabledude
Summary: Eve and Villanelle are together forever, but immortality comes with its own set of challenges. When old foes come back to haunt them, Eve and Villanelle's connection is tested more than ever before. As individuals, and as a pair, can they stand the test of time?
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Series: Thirst-verse [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1620313
Comments: 291
Kudos: 403
Collections: Killing Eve Week 2020





	1. Honeymoon

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! Welcome to the final arc of the Thirst-verse. 
> 
> This is the final part to a series of works in my tropey/goofy/actiony/romantic/villaneve heavy Vampire AU. If you're new here, and you're intrigued, you should start at the beginning with [Thirst](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22167241).
> 
> If you're a returning fan, but you need a refresher on what happened in part II, [Stakes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23157961), you can find a brief recap [here](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/post/626280583093485568/stakes-recap)!
> 
> Love you all, old fans and new friends. I hope you enjoy the final part of the trilogy. :)

“A little to the left,” Villanelle says. “No, stupid. Your other left.”

“ _My_ left? I thought you meant your left.”

“If I meant my left, I would say my left.”

Eve caps her lipstick. “You’re being unreasonably difficult for someone who made me do this so many times.”

“You complained plenty while you did it.”

“You should’ve swiped Aaron’s mirror.”

“Sorry, I was a little more preoccupied with carrying you out of there while every cell in your body rebuilt itself, escaping from all his security measures and guards, out into the world where it was _broad daylight_ , by the way…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eve grumbles. 

“My turn.” Villanelle reaches for her mascara, but Eve puts her hand on Villanelle’s, stopping her.

“You know, it just occurred to me. It would be a lot easier this way.” Eve pries the tube out of Villanelle’s hand, and takes out the brush. Villanelle’s eyelids flutter as she shuts them gently, and Eve leans close. Her hand is steadier than it’s ever been while she tried to apply makeup to herself in the past. She isn’t sure if it’s due to the way her entire body is changed, or because it’s Villanelle. While Eve applies the mascara, she sits patiently, eyes shut, still as a statue. The soft, pale curve of her cheekbones is certainly as breathtaking as the work of any Renaissance master. 

“There.” Eve caps the mascara again. “I’ve got to do something about my hair, though, I just know it’s a mess…”

Before she can say another word, Villanelle’s hands are on her, pulling through her curls, gently, not to destroy them, but to lift them, rearrange them, caress them. “You are beautiful,” she murmurs.

“You too.”

They kiss.

When Eve pulls away, she can’t help but let out a laugh at her half-applied lipstick, which left an uneven red smear on Villanelle’s lips.

“What is it?”

Eve answers by reaching up to thumb Villanelle’s lip, and showing her the red smudge that comes off.

Instead of demanding another mirror session, Villanelle shrugs. “There’ll be more of that soon, anyway.”

 _Ah, yes._ Eve grimaces at the reminder of the nature of their impending outing.

Villanelle senses her reluctance, and takes her by the arms, over to the couch in the center of her flat. “I know you’re nervous about your first time,” she coos softly. 

“Couldn’t we wait a little longer?”

“We only have a few hours left until sunrise.”

“I mean, another night. I think it’s too soon.” 

It’s been three days since Rome. At least, three days Eve has been conscious for. Villanelle told her she was out for nearly forty-eight hours at the beginning of the change, during which time Villanelle got them both out of the clutches of Aaron’s cronies, and back to London. 

Eve suspects her body blocked out any memory of that first phase as a survival tactic, since the first day she can remember was nothing but a red haze of pain. She only recalls vague flashes of Villanelle’s face and the surroundings of the apartment between feverish visions that plagued her for hours on end. The next day, the visions cleared, and everything was very bright and loud. Villanelle explained later that this was due to Eve’s brain adjusting to the new flood of information that her vampire senses provided, an order of magnitude greater than what she was used to processing as a human. Yesterday was the first day she finally felt some semblance of “normal”, or at least, what her new normal will be. Still, she spent the day inside the flat, not ready to emerge into the world, and confront the fact that she had changed, yet the outside world remained the same.

“You are going to have to get over it at some point,” Villanelle says, a trace of weariness creeping into the patient tone she's maintained for the past two days. “You’re running off the last traces of your human blood, now, but soon you’re going to be thirsty.”

“I don’t think I can do it,” Eve says quietly.

“It’s not that hard. You drank from me,” Villanelle points out. “It’s like that. Only this time, it will feel a lot better. You’ll like it.”

“I don’t want to like it. I don’t want to _eat_ people.”

“Stop thinking of yourself as one of them, Eve. They’re like animals. It’s no different than you eating meat before.”

Eve rolls her eyes. “If you make that comparison one more time–”

“You are a vampire. Get used to it.”

“I’m trying!” Eve’s senses are suddenly overwhelmed. The safe haven of the apartment, that she had finally grown used to, feels oppressively loud again. The hum of the television. The rush of the water through the pipes in the walls. The chatter of the neighbors. The footsteps of people out on the street… Eve covers her ears and tucks her head into her knees. It’s too much.

“Shh,” Villanelle is there, rubbing her back softly. At least she remembers how hard it was. At least she’s able to empathize on this singular shared experience. After a few more seconds, focusing on Villanelle’s touch, Villanelle’s voice only, Eve steadies herself, and picks up her head.

“This ‘humans are meat’ thing. Is that how you saw me up until a few days ago?”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“It’s what it sounds like, though.”

Villanelle takes Eve’s hand and squeezes it. “It gets easier. I promise.”

“There’s got to be another way.” It hits Eve, and she lets out a cry of excitement. “What about donated blood?”

“Where are you going to find a donor?”

“Hospitals, blood banks.”

Villanelle lights up with amusement. “I want to watch you walk up to the counter and ask ‘how much for a bag of blood and a side of fries’.”

“I don’t mean _buy_ it. We can _take_ things, right?”

“Steal from a hospital? Eve, that’s deranged.” Villanelle stands up. “Besides, blood loses some of its punch once it leaves the body. Some of the nutrients or whatever. Like frozen vegetables. Can’t beat fresh from the source.”

She offers her hand to Eve. Not that Eve needs any help getting up, but it’s inviting. 

“Put on a happy face,” she tells Eve, as they head for the door. “Tonight is the first night of the rest of your life.”

Eve sees the streets of London with new eyes.

Well, not just new eyes. All of her senses are upgraded, and emerging from the protective cocoon of Villanelle’s apartment building is slightly terrifying at first.

Objectively, the streets are quieter than most times Eve has tread them – rarely did she walk around at two in the morning during her human life – but for her new senses, there’s much to take in. 

When a car rumbles by, it’s like an earthquake. Strangely, though it’s loud, it doesn’t drown out other sounds; her new ears are capable of processing many sounds simultaneously. Even underneath the roar of motors she can hear the music from the pub across the street, the televisions playing late-night programming from surrounding apartments, and the heartbeats of every human on the block.

Her stomach rumbles.

“It’s about time,” Villanelle says, poking Eve in the belly. Eve feels a tingle at the touch, right on the site of her mortal wound. Though it healed completely during her change, a phantom echo of the gaping wound in her stomach flashes back to her. The fear of knowing it her time was up as she bled out in Aaron’s palazzo. 

But she’s here now, and she wants to stay that way. Which means, she has to eat.

She loosely grips Villanelle’s hand as they walk down the street. For a few minutes, it feels like they’re just wandering, enjoying a night out together. Eve starts to adjust to the new sensory overdose around her. For one, she can see through the darkness clear as day, at a range that seems to be close to a kilometer (it’s hard to say for sure, since her vision is more limited by buildings blocking her view than by any darkness or loss of detail). 

By far the biggest change is her sense of smell. Eve thought she had a sense of smell, before, but she might as well have been noseless for all that it compares to what she experiences now. It’ll take some more time to really grow accustomed to it, she expects, but the olfactory landscape is so much richer than she ever could have imagined. She closes her eyes to take it all in better, then covers her ears, as well, and finds that she can still make sense of her surroundings by scent alone. The tang of exhaust, a car going by. Meat and tomatoes and other foods, must be a restaurant on the corner. 

Then a sweet, light scent comes close and overtakes the others. Eve opens her eyes. It’s Villanelle, taking Eve’s face in her hands, and leaning in for a kiss. “You are adorable. Like a baby taking its first steps.”

As they reach a relatively busy corner, with a few pubs still open, they stop. “So…” Eve begins. She’s now faced with a question she’s wondered about ever since she first confirmed the existence of vampires. “How do I, um… choose?”

Villanelle squeezes Eve’s hand. “Take a sniff. Who does your heart desire?”

“Can you not say ‘who’?” Eve swallows.

Villanelle gives a withering look, but concedes, “Fine. _What_ smells most appealing? Your first meal is a big milestone. You might as well make it a good one.”

Eve takes a deep breath, sifting through the dozens of scents, trying to separate which are appetizing. It’s hard, because her brain keeps going to the “who”. Shouldn’t she focus less on what’s pleasant for her, and more on who the world might miss the least? 

_No,_ she chides herself. _You’re not one of them anymore. You never questioned the morality of the cow that died for your steak._ As much as she detests Villanelle’s favorite metaphor, it may be the only mantra that helps her get through this.

Although, honestly, her qualms are shrinking by the second in proportion with her growing hunger.

She takes one more breath, letting her subconscious guide her. “There.” Eve points out before she even opens her eyes, and sees a lump of a man exiting one of the pubs. “Oh, God,” she mumbles, as she gets a better look at him. He’s mostly bald, thickset. Looks perhaps in his forties. Maybe a father – _nope, don’t go there._

Villanelle snickers a little, and sensing Eve’s embarrassment, explains. “There’s not much logic to taste. It doesn’t mean you find anything else about them appealing.” 

“See you tomorrow, Raymond,” someone calls out from the pub. The man, Raymond, hollers a farewell before tucking his hands in his pockets and walking down the street. Eve watches, transfixed, until Villanelle nudges her on the arm; he’s about to turn a corner. Eve almost forgot her own role in this. She has to follow. She has to hunt her prey. 

She expected instinct to take over at some point and relieve her of decision-making, but Eve’s conscious mind is still firmly at the wheel, so she just starts walking after the man. Villanelle follows silently, so Eve assumes this is the proper thing to do.

They follow him for several blocks, and he doesn’t look back once. Eve’s struck at how fortunate it is that she chose a man; any woman walking alone at this hour surely would’ve noticed she was being followed and panicked by now.

The man finally turns down a small side street. Villanelle elbows Eve gently. “Time to make a move.” Eve sees what Villanelle means: Raymond approaches a house towards the end of the lane, and begins fumbling in his pockets.

If she’s going to do this, she has to do it now, before he enters the protection of his home. But Eve remains paralyzed by nerves.

“Don’t feel bad about it,” Villanelle hisses. “You can tell just by looking that he’s a piece of shit.”

Eve’s not so sure about that line of logic, but her stomach rumbles again, and Raymond’s searching for his keys, and she doesn’t feel compelled to argue. “Um. Okay. What do I do?”

“Bite. Drink. Enjoy.”

Eve gives a pleading look for more information.

“I promise it isn’t that hard,” Villanelle says. “And I will be right here if you need me.”

Eve doesn’t feel ready in the slightest, but Raymond has finally found his keys, and is about to put them into the lock, so she has to do something. She begins walking down the lane and brushes her arm through a line of bushes in front of one building, producing a very conspicuous rustle.   
  
He looks up in the direction of the sound, and takes in Eve standing there, alone, on the empty street in the middle of the night.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

“Yes. I mean, no.” Eve wonders if vampires usually have more clever banter for this part. She’ll have to work on that, at some point.

Raymond takes a few steps towards her, concerned. “Are you lost?”

“No.”

“Are you sure you don’t need something?”

“Could you hold still, please?”

“Hold still, why?” he asks, growing more agitated. He’s only a few steps from Eve now. “Are you alright?”

“Just stop moving, please.” Eve holds up a hand, though he doesn’t halt in coming to assist her. “Stop…”

He’s so close now. It’s her only chance. 

Eve grabs him by the arms and lunges. The man cries out in pain as Eve’s teeth sink into his shoulder.

A groan comes from behind Eve, where Villanelle is watching from the shadows. “The shoulder?” She groans. “Eve, the _shoulder_?”

Eve tears her face free to snap, “Well, I don’t know, do I?!”

“Finish the job at least!”

Raymond is yelling out in pain, struggling to free himself, but his flailing is absolutely useless against Eve’s grip around his body. Eve wraps him tightly with one arm, and puts her other hand over his mouth to muffle his screams, before he wakes up the whole neighborhood.

With her teeth, she tears away a chunk of his shirt, clearing access to the bite she left on his shoulder moments ago. The blood glistens. An echo of human revulsion surfaces at the sight of the open wound, but quickly fades into the background, overwritten by desire. She seals her mouth around the wound and drinks.

Eve’s first thought is that it’s a _lot_ of liquid. She has a flashback to the one time she attempted a keg-stand in college, and threw up shortly thereafter. But her new body is accustomed to taking in such a large volume; she doesn’t even have to pause for air as she swallows one mouthful of blood after another.

A few minutes later, a raspy slurp lets her know she’s exhausted the source. The body is now limp in her arms. What once was a “he”, now an “it”. She drops it to the ground.

Arms wrap around her from behind. Villanelle puts her head on Eve’s shoulder, and whispers in her ear. “How did it feel?”

Eve wipes her mouth, staining the back of her hand red. “Wet. Warm. Fantastic.”

Eve thinks back to when she asked Villanelle to describe the feeling of drinking. Back then, Villanelle struggled to put it into words. Eve gets it now. Nothing in human language can properly describe the feeling of the blood now filling her veins, filling her with energy and strength and life.

Three days ago – no, five – Eve died. Now she’s full of blood and she’s _alive_ again. 

She looks straight up and laughs, wildly, into the night sky.

Villanelle tugs her arm. Now, it’s not a withering look she gives Eve, but a mischievous one. 

The night is theirs.

Villanelle leads the way, and they veer out of the center of the city, towards a park. There aren’t many people around, and it’s dark, so she takes it up past human speed. They run laps of the park, and Eve can’t believe how fast they’re moving, it’s like a dream. 

Eve’s fast, and strong, and free. It would be an understatement to say she feels young again, for she never felt this capable, not at any point in her human life.

She’s sure she has a dumb grin on her face, but Villanelle doesn’t make fun, she’s just as delighted. For once, Eve can keep up with her. For once, they can experience something truly together. 

A few more laps just because they can, then, they slow to a less conspicuous speed and loop back towards the city proper.

“This is incredible!” Eve shouts, bounding across the empty street. She’s so excited, looking back to make sure Villanelle’s following her, that she doesn’t process the roar, and the screech.

_SLAM._

Eve’s on the ground. Why’s she on the ground? How did she end up there? She looks up and sees bright lights, and blinks – that can’t be right. Before she can worry about the humans shouting, she’s moving again, Villanelle has run out into the street and scooped her up. Villanelle whisks her down the street, and the drops her on the corner.

“What just happened?”

“You got hit by a bus.”

“I got hit by a bus?”

Villanelle points down to the end of the street from whence they came. Sure enough, a night bus is stopped in the middle of the street. The driver has gotten out, and is looking at the front of the bus, clearly confused. 

“I had to get you out of the way before they started asking questions about why you are still able to walk.” Villanelle squints at Eve. “You are, right?”

Eve flexes her arms, and shakes out her legs. Everything’s in working order. She might be a little bruised where she hit pavement, but otherwise, she’s fine.

“I got hit by a bus,” she repeats. “That’s amazing.” She starts laughing.

“Are you alright? Your head, I mean.”

“I’m better than alright.” Eve throws her head back and yells into the night. “I’m _unbreakable,_ dude!”

“I think it’s time to get you home, kid.”

Villanelle practically has to drag Eve back to her flat. Eve wants to fight, because there’s still so much to do, and she’s only just getting started, but Villanelle pointedly reminds her that there are only a few minutes until sunrise, so she doesn’t have a choice.

As soon as they stumble back up to the flat, they’re all over each other.

Eve clutches at Villanelle like her life depends on it. This is it. This is what she drank for, isn’t it? So they can be together, like this…

They fall through the apartment like a hurricane, knocking over furniture as they go. Desperate to hold one another.

Eve grasps at Villanelle’s skin as she has before, but something’s off. Why doesn’t it feel the same? Villanelle hasn’t changed…

Whatever it is, Eve decides to power through it. She leans in and presses her lips to Villanelle’s. But still, something isn’t right. It’s not just her vampire senses; it’s not merely _more_ sensation that she’s taking in, but _different._

Finally, she puts it together. Villanelle isn’t cold. She no longer forms the icy embrace that Eve has grown accustomed to. No, Eve corrects herself: Villanelle is still cold, but the difference is, Eve’s body temperature now matches hers. Instead of the icy shock that Eve used to feel at her every touch, it’s more… tepid. 

While Eve deals with this observation, Villanelle senses her hesitation and takes charge. She drags Eve by the frame and tosses her onto the bed. She climbs atop, straddling Eve, and leans down to kiss at her neck, and collarbone.

Eve tries to get her head back in the zone, but much as she’d go mad when Villanelle did this before, it doesn’t give the same thrill it used to. And is she crazy, or is Villanelle less ravenous than usual? She’s going through the motions, but there’s less desperation as she inches along Eve’s skin, less desire in her eye…

“You know, we don’t have to…” Eve squeaks.

Villanelle freezes with her lips on Eve’s collarbone, and her eyes dart up to Eve’s face.

“I mean,” Eve continues. “I’m actually kinda tired, and we could just go to bed.”

“Okay.” Like lightning, Villanelle drops onto the mattress next to Eve. She’s out, or at least, doing a very convincing imitation of sleep, before Eve can say another word.

Eve gives up, and tries to let sleep overtake her as sunlight starts to creep in around the edges of the thick curtains over the window.

Eve wakes to find Villanelle watching some reality show on TV.

“Morning,” Villanelle mutters, at hearing Eve stir. Already, she’s acting different, not making the effort to downplay her vampiric senses that she used to before, to avoid spooking Eve.

“Morning,” Eve replies, out of habit, though it’s in fact late evening. On a nocturnal schedule, everything is relative.

“What do you want to do tonight?” Villanelle murmurs without pulling her gaze away from the television. “Now that you’re able to go up and about, we could catch a plane to Alaska, like we talked about. But if you don’t think you can contain yourself being in a small space with a bunch of humans for so long, we can wait a little longer while you get used to the hunger.”

“I don’t think we should go to Alaska,” Eve says.

“Somewhere else you had in mind? I know you love London, but I have to say, Eve, I’m getting kind of bored of it.”

“I think we need to talk.”

Villanelle finally pulls her eyes away from the screen. Eve joins her on the couch, and picks up the remote to turn off the TV.

“What happened last night…”

“Ew,” Villanelle groans.

“Don’t be a baby,” Eve snaps. “Something was different, in a not-great way, and ignoring it won’t do us any favors.”

Villanelle makes a face. Of course, it’s Eve’s job to supply all the maturity in this situation, but she struggles to find the right phrasing to broach the uncomfortable topic. 

“If something isn’t… _working_ for you–”

“Oh god, you are being so dramatic.”

“I’ll stop being dramatic if you can look me in the eye and tell me what happened last night won’t happen again,” Eve says. “I _know_ it wasn’t just me.”

“How about Iceland?” Villanelle says suddenly. “The pictures are beautiful, and I bet there’s good food there.”

“I’m not joking around, Vill.” Eve’s tone grows hard. “I don’t know if this is sustainable.”

A few seconds of silence pass, that feel painfully long, and Eve wishes she’d left the reality show on to drone in the background.

“What are you saying, Eve?”

“Where is this going?” Eve says. “I love you. We’ve been through so much, but the whole time we’ve been together, it’s been one thing after another. I’ve been thinking I’m about to die every other minute, and, I just…” Eve sighs. “I’m having trouble picturing what this looks like, long-term.”

“You worry too much.” Villanelle shrugs. “We’ll figure it out.”

“And if we don’t?” Eve rises from the couch and starts pacing the length of the flat.

“There’s no deadline, Eve,” Villanelle says, dripping with condescension. “We’ve got eternity.”

“What do you know about eternity?” Eve snaps. “You’re twenty-six!”

“I’ve been living the immortal life longer than you,” Villanelle says, finally getting riled up, rising from the couch.

“I’ve been on this _planet_ longer than you!”

“See, this is why I didn’t want to turn you!” Villanelle’s mad, now, spitting in Eve’s face. “I knew it would ruin everything.”

“Sorry it’s an inconvenience to you that I’m still alive,” Eve laughs bitterly. “Sorry you regret saving me.” 

“I really do!”

“Fuck you.”

Villanelle grabs Eve by the wrist, sending a thrill through her. For a moment, as Villanelle fixes her in her smoldering glare, Eve’s overcome with a familiar flash of fear – she’s angered the predator who could kill her.

Eve’s breath quickens, and she recognizes fire in Villanelle’s eyes. Maybe this is salvageable after all.

But then, Eve pulls her arm. All she intends is to test the resistance. Naturally, she expects that she’ll pull uselessly against Villanelle’s iron grip, but to her shock… she wins. Not only does she pull her arm free, she also yanks Villanelle off balance in the process.

Everything’s different. Everything’s _wrong_.

Eve avoids Villanelle’s gaze, now, as an odd wave of shame washes over her.

“You know…” Villanelle’s voice is low and hoarse. “Nothing says we have to stay together. We aren’t married.”

“We aren’t.”

Eve shifts uncomfortably. If she fought like this with Niko, she’d run upstairs and lock herself in her study. 

“I guess I’ll leave, then,” she says.

“Good.”

“Don’t expect me to come after you again.”

“I won’t.”

Villanelle refuses to even look in Eve’s direction. Eve scoffs and leaves, slamming the door behind her, hard enough that the entire apartment rattles.

As she storms out into the night, she supposes, maybe it’s for the best. Villanelle needs some space, and Eve definitely needs to blow off some steam.

When Villanelle’s ready to be more mature about it, she can come find Eve. Hell, she’ll probably appear by the end of the night, begging Eve to come back to her. Maybe a little longer if she’s really in a mood to sulk. 

If Eve knows anything about Villanelle, she can say with certainty that Villanelle will come find her by the end of the next night at the latest.

She doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's so good to be back. This series is like home for me. <3
> 
> Lots of BIG THINGS coming in this arc... let me know what you think, or come say hello on You can also follow me on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xoxo gossip vampire


	2. Postmortem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve lays low, trying to blend in among humans and live a normal life, putting her past behind her.

Eve opens the mini-fridge and reaches all the way into the back to pull out a bag of blood. It’s her last one. She makes a mental note to order more.

She tears the bag open with her teeth, then squeezes the blood into a plastic bottle that once held pomegranate juice. It’s a convincing disguise.

Then, she leaves her tiny, dingy, studio where she sleeps, and heads to work. It isn’t far, but Eve’s stomach grumbles, so she takes a swig of blood as she walks.

She passes a restaurant with the door propped open, out of which wafts a welcoming cocktail of scents. Human food and _human food_. 

Eve stops. Inhales. Imagines, for a moment. She could pause for a meal – it won’t take long. It’ll take the edge off, too. Wait for a lone diner to leave the restaurant… Follow them down the road… 

Eve puts some pep in her step and moves at a slightly faster-than-human pace to get to work before she does something she’ll regret.

Three months ago Eve stumbled into this basement office asking for a job based on an internet posting. The post was sketchy and the office did not disappoint on that front, lit only by dingy fluorescent panels in the ceiling. Not a window in sight, Eve noted with pleasure. Through Eve didn’t have any real journalism qualifications, the online publication “Bitter Pill” seemed to care less about credentials and more about relentless skepticism towards any and all establishments.

Three months ago, Eve introduced herself to the editor-in-chief, Jamie. She knew she couldn’t be herself. Eve Polastri was dead, after all, and even going by her maiden name was too risky, because a simple Google search is all it would take to connect it to news of her disappearance or Niko’s death. She realized all this in the very moment Jamie asked for her name, leaving her very little time to come up with a suitable alias.

“Lilith” was the name that popped out of her mouth. “Lilith… Stern.”

“From _Cheers_?” Jamie asked, glowering at her over his glasses. 

“No, that’s Lilith _Sternin_. But I get that a lot.”

Three months ago, Jamie gave her a desk and a byline at Bitter Pill in spite of her request that she only work nights. Or maybe because of it. The entire purpose of Bitter Pill seemed to be to investigate the unknown, from conspiracies to characters – the stranger the better. Perhaps Jamie immediately knew something was off about Eve, and he only wanted her close for observation’s sake.

Later, Eve discovered that her night owl tendencies and poor grooming did not stick out among the employees at Bitter Pill. In fact, she blends in quite well among the motley crew of writers, though she doesn’t cross paths with most of them very often, working nights as she does.

Eve has had to put a lot of care into blending in, lately, among humans. She always liked turtlenecks, but wears them exclusively these days; when paired with leaving her hair down, they completely cover the bite scar on the side of her neck.

Eve finds it somewhat ironic that the scar she needs to cover isn’t even the one that turned her, but it’s the more exposed and more eye-catching. The scar on her stomach, her _soul-scar_ , remains gleefully hidden from the eyes of others, though Eve always feels its presence. Feels the ragged tear of when the shard of glass came out of it. Feels the dizzying suction of when most all of her blood exited her body through that point, sucked out by…

Eve digs her nails into her palm. _Don’t go there._

It’s about nine in the evening when Eve boots up her computer. Technically, she told Jamie she plans to pursue a lead on a possible pipeline funneling drugs into boarding schools, but first, before she forgets, she needs to order more blood.

She logs onto the site she found on the dark web and puts in an order for another dozen bags of blood, which will be ready for her pickup outside an Underground station by the next evening. The stuff isn’t cheap; essentially her entire paycheck goes to it, which is only feasible since her only other expense these days is the meager rent for the cramped studio in which she sleeps during the day. Anyways, however much bagged blood costs, it’s worth it to avoid hunting.

When she doesn’t hunt, it’s almost plausible that she’s still normal. It’s almost plausible that she really is a sun-averse human on a diet of pomegranate juice.

Putting blood in pomegranate juice bottles is a tip she got from a vampire forum on the dark web. Much of her ‘research’ time during her first few weeks at Bitter Pill were actually devoted to sifting through the large amount of vampire fiction on the internet to find authentic vampire communities. It was an arduous process, but once she found the real vampiric voices, they were a treasure trove of advice. 

The pomegranate juice tip came from a forum for “Vegan Vamps”. Eve doesn’t spend much time participating there, because she finds the general sentiment a little too weepy and self-flagellating, but she appreciates their practical tips on sourcing blood.

Her objection to hunting isn’t the same as most of the “Vegan Vamps”. Sure, it’s nice to feel karmically neutral, but the real reason she hasn’t bit a human in three months is because any time she even thinks of hunting again, it makes her think of her first and only proper hunt. Which makes her think of what happened immediately afterward.

Bear, whose name is very appropriate for what a large, hairy, bumbling sort of mammal he is, sits down at the desk across from Eve’s.

“Staying late tonight?”

“Hope I won’t be disturbing you.” Bear leans to the side to look at Eve around their computer monitors. “I’ve just uncovered a new cache of data in that MI6 internal corruption case I’m working on. There’s so much to sift through, but I want to have something to turn in by the morning.”

“Of course not. Do your thing.” It’s not so bad to have another person there, once in a while. As long as they can each work on their own projects.

Bear frowns. “Can I ask you something, Lilith? Since you’re always here at night.”

“Sure.”

“Someone’s been stealing my snacks. My _personal_ snacks, that I keep in my desk. No one will confess to it, because they’re worried that I’ll be furious. They’re right.”

“Is it that serious?”

“‘Course it’s serious!” Bear’s so riled up, he starts to go pink underneath his beard. “If they just asked, I might share, but sneaking and stealing’s plain wrong. It’s breaching boundaries. You wouldn’t want people taking your juice there without asking, would you?”

Eve clutches her bottle. “Fair enough.”

“So have you seen anything?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?” Bear furrows his brow. “I’m pretty sure it’s happening in the nights.”

“How do you know?”  
  
Bear glances around, though no one’s in the office besides the two of them, then leans forward to whisper, “I set up a camera.”

“Clever.”

“But whoever it is, they’re not only smart, they’re cheeky. I check in the morning and there’s no one on the footage, but the snacks are gone. Like they levitate themselves out of the drawer. Taking the food, I can’t abide, but at least I can understand. Who’d go to that much effort just to annoy me?”

“I don’t know. I can barely manage the effort to get out of bed in the evenings.”

Bear laughs. “I like you, Lil. Maybe I’ll switch over to night shifts permanently and keep you company.”

Eve forces a laugh, too. They work quietly for a while. Well, Bear is probably working, and meanwhile, Eve’s down a rabbit hole on the vampire net. She can’t help it. Much as she tries to forget her status, she needs to learn all she can about some of the finer aspects of vampire life, so that she can seamlessly adapt. This online research is how she has to learn things like, what kind of blinds are most dependable for keeping sunlight out, or how to make a human thrall, since she doesn’t have another vampire to show her.

Eve digs her nails into her thigh. She did it again. She did the thing she’s trying to train herself to stop doing. The pain in her thigh is a mechanic to help dissuade her from the pain of thinking about Villanelle.

Villanelle, who didn’t want to turn her in the first place. Who immediately regretted it. Who has no use for Eve now that she isn’t a tasty little human plaything. Who finds Eve as a vampire so repulsive she isn’t worth a second thought. 

Villanelle, whom Eve hasn’t heard from at all in three months.

“Mind sharing some of what you’re working on?” Eve blurts. She needs some external distraction from her spiral of self-loathing. 

“Sure.” Bear lights up. Like most of the employees at Bitter Pill, he has a real passion for investigating conspiracy and corruption; that’s the guiding principle Jamie looks for in all his hires. “So you know I’ve been sniffing about for corruption within MI6. This new cache of data I’ve got has some really solid leads. I think it’s all the proof I’ll need, once I untangle it all.”

“Proof of what, exactly?”

“Payments. Personnel. Hidden from the main books. Someone on the inside is running a secret project, secret even from the other blokes of MI6, and you know what we say here – if someone’s trying to hide it, it can’t be good.”

Eve pulls up the collar of her turtleneck. “That’s right.”

“Once I decrypt where these payments are going, that should give an idea of what exactly this secret operation actually is.”

Bear types furiously as he talks. Eve once again feels some guilt over her lack of qualifications. He actually knows how to decrypt things. But she has her own skills. She’s great at research. It just so happens that she’s researching vampire quality of life facts at the moment…

She closes the browser window and opens her notes on the drug pipeline. Maybe she can have something to show Jamie by the morning, too. If nothing else, it will do her good to think about something human.

No more self-pitying vampire Eve. Time to play the spunky human, Lilith Stern, who’s never hurt a fly and is really, really passionate about uncovering truth.

Researching furiously for evidence to support a theory that anyone else would call crazy. Bitter Pill is really where Eve belongs, after all. She falls into a nice rhythm while she works. Research is good. Research keeps her brain satisfied.

Keeping her body satisfied is a little harder. She takes another sip of blood.

A few minutes later, Bear gets up to go to the loo. Eve scoots around to his side of the desk and reaches into his drawer.

While she gleefully plucks the bag of Tangfastics from Bear’s desk, Eve thinks, being unphotographable comes in handy, sometimes.

Eve knows she can’t eat them, like she can’t eat any human food, but she can’t help herself. She keeps taking them out of pure force of habit. She’s always hungry these days; no matter how many bags of blood she drinks, she never feels satisfied. So she does what she always used to do when she was hungry and irritable: she reaches for the closest junk food. 

She pops a few gummies into her mouth before dropping the bag back where she found it. But now, instead of the pleasant sugar-rush giving way to her feeling mildly crappy the next day, the candies make her extremely nauseated. Her new body says a firm _“No”_ to Tangfastics.

She’s spitting up chewed gummies into the bin just as Bear returns.

“Whoa,” he gasps. “Everything alright?”

Eve coughs. “A little nauseous, that’s all.”

Bear shrugs, and reaches into his drawer, pulling out the bag of candy Eve left there only a minute ago, and begins munching away. Eve stares longingly at the sugary treats. A luxury of days past.

“I think I’ve found my way into this,” Bear says, around a mouthful of candy. “There’s this small handful of employees who are listed on MI6 payroll in some places, but if you trace the path of their paychecks, the checks don’t actually come from the MI6 payroll account. They come from this other offshore account…”

“What’s a handful in these cases? A few, or a few dozen?”

“There’s six active accounts. One of them was dormant for a while, but started receiving deposits again about three months ago. Plus one more here, which is still dormant. Last payment made four and a half months ago. Wonder if the fella got sacked. Extra sad, since it looks like he only got a few weeks’ worth of payments.”

A few weeks… Four and a half months ago… Secret payments from MI6… 

Eve realizes with horror that she knows exactly what “conspiracy” Bear has uncovered. She used to be a part of it.

“Six accounts, then, huh?” She manages, though her mouth is suddenly very dry. “Do you have any way of telling who they belong to?”

Of course, Eve knows whom the accounts belong to. Carolyn, Kenny, Elena, Jess, Hugo, and Konstantin – his would be the one which resumed activity three months ago, after he was released from Villanelle’s control, and free to return to the Silver League.

“No, but it’s a simple process to access the bank records and get a name,” Bear says. “I’m a bit intrigued by this dormant one. I’ll start there.”

_Shit._

Eve reaches for her bottle of blood, and takes a big gulp. Sitting is too restrictive, right now, so she gets up from her chair and stretches her legs. She pulls her hair into a bun to get it out of her face.

“Alright, sent a request over. Results should come back from the server in a couple minutes.” Bear spins in his chair to face Eve. “Now we wait.”

“Right.” Eve paces the office, trying to come up with a plan. A couple minutes, Bear said. A couple minutes for her to figure out what the hell she’s supposed to do here.

“What’s that on your neck?”

Eve’s hand shoots up to her neck instinctively. Shit, she put her hair up without thinking, and her scar is peeking over the edge of her turtleneck. “Neighbor’s dog when I was a kid.”

“Weird,” Bear mutters. “It looks almost like a human did it.”

“That _is_ weird.” Eve snatches her bottle of blood from the desk and takes a hearty sip, while Bear drums his fingers on his desk impatiently.

"Um, Lil." Bear points to his lip. “You’ve got a little juice there.”

“Oh. Oops.” As Eve wipes the smudge of blood from her lips, she’s hit with a pang of hunger. It’s probably not wise to be alone in the office with Bear right now. She could go outside, walk about in the night, and get some fresh air. But any minute now, Bear’s computer will complete its search…

“Are you alright? You look a bit off.”

“Just…” Eve blinks out of her reverie. “Hungry.”

“You really should have a proper meal.” Bear looks at the bottle of “pomegranate juice”. “I swear I’m not usually one to comment on eating habits. I think it’s between you and God. But how long have you been on this juice cleanse?”

Eve stiffens.

“I don’t want this to come off wrong. I mean this as a friend, nothing more.” Bear leans forward to say solemnly, “You don’t need to lose weight. You look amazing, Lil.”

Eve laughs once, twice. Then breaks out in a fit. Bear is flummoxed at this reaction.

“I’m sorry,” Eve says. “My dietary needs have nothing to do with vanity. It’s more about nutrients.”

“Maybe that juice is healthy, but I say, life’s too short. Indulge.” Bear grabs another handful of gummies to prove his point.

“Indulge…” Eve stares at Bear, and despite her best efforts, her mouth cracks open, and her tongue runs over her lips. 

He looks back, wary. While he chews, the gears turn in his head. 

“Is this some sort of early Halloween thing?” he gasps suddenly. “Nocturnal habits... Pomegranate juice... A bite on your neck…”

Eve grins and throws up her hands. “You caught me.”

“Pretty good prank, actually. Had me nervous for a second.” Bear lets out a chuckle. Then silence. He looks at Eve like he’s waiting for a more extensive explanation.

Then, the computer dings.

“Here’s the results.” Bear swivels his chair and peers at the screen. “Turns out this account belongs to an Eve Polastri.” He sits back. “Hm. Nice name. Now let’s find out who you are.”

Bear types her name into a search engine. He hits enter. 

As the page loads, bringing up photos of Eve’s face, she pounces, sinking her teeth into his neck. Her hand instinctively covers his mouth, not that it matters much since the office is empty, and no one’s likely to hear him scream. 

Eve gets her Tangfastics after all. She just needed a middleman to turn them into a kind of energy she can enjoy, and sweet Jesus, does Eve enjoy herself. It’s true, bagged blood doesn’t hold a candle to fresh from the source.

After drinking him dry, Eve has no room left inside for any feeling other than satisfaction and relief.

 _This is bad,_ Eve muses, as she drops the bulky cadaver to the floor. _I ought to feel bad about this, right?_

Instead, she feels really, really, great. Clearly, she isn't cut out to be a "Vegan Vamp".

Licking her fingers, she sits down in Bear’s chair. The image of her and Niko that popped up on the search stares her in the face. It’s the first time Eve has seen her own face in months.

She closes the search and begins scrolling through the rest of the files in Bear’s “cache”. Though a lot of it is indecipherable, several pieces make much more sense for her, immediately, than they must have to him, knowing the true nature of the “conspiracy”. 

There’s a whole section of records on hunting equipment and technology. Files tracking inventory. Invoices for medieval weaponry. Receipts for purchasing a ridiculous amount of stripped and recovered silver. 

Then, dozens of folders named after vampires. Photos of their human identities, notes on where and whom they killed, as well as verification of when and where they’d been slain, if applicable.

One folder name jumps out at Eve. _Noface._

Much as she dreads it, she clicks on the folder to open it. 

The first file in the folder is an image: Villanelle’s, or rather, Oksana’s, mugshot. Eve ignores most of the contents, for she already knows more about Villanelle than any of these logs can possibly contain. 

One of the files towards the end is of a different type than the rest, so Eve opens it. It appears to be a map of Europe, with some tracking location history. Are they following Villanelle again? But it’s not a list of sightings; it’s a long series of data points, which seem to have been taken _hourly_. Eve scrolls through the log. The dates go back not only months, but _years_. 

Eve tears through the desk until she finds an external drive, then plugs it into Bear’s computer and copies all the files onto it. Then, she wipes the computer. Once the data is deleted, she smashes the computer to bits for good measure.

No one else can see this data. Eve needs to go back through it with a fine toothed comb, but what she saw so far is concerning enough. Location tracking. Files stolen from Peel Technologies. Formulas for new, more sophisticated hunting technology. 

Eve’s scar aches at the very thought of what she needs to do next.

She needs to warn Villanelle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is it bad that I'm hungry now?
> 
> come join the vampire revolution with me on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xo


	3. Meanwhile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Villanelle finds difficulty amusing herself on her own, until she's tracked down by a familiar face.

The cake smells delicious. Villanelle aches with envy while she watches everyone else dig in. She wouldn’t mind getting a slice smashed into her face, as the bride does to her new husband. A minute later, he gets her back. Villanelle wouldn’t mind licking the frosting off of her lips, even if it would make her sick.

Weddings are beautiful.

Single and free, Villanelle needed a new hobby. Taunting hunters isn’t fun anymore; it’s rather difficult to enjoy the thrill of the chase when Villanelle has to leave obvious bait and slow down to a crawl to even get the humans to catch onto her trail.

And besides, it will never be the same without Eve.

It’s been two months since Eve stormed out on her, and Villanelle hasn’t felt the need to chase after her. Why bother, when she knows she’d only be in for another whining lecture about something that isn’t even in her control?

Two months, and Villanelle has found that there’s a lot of time to kill when she isn’t looking after a needy, ungrateful, reckless companion. Ergo, new hobbies.

Hunting hunters is too easy. Hunting humans is too easy. So Villanelle decided to raise the bar.

She flew out to Spain. She made her way to the most expensive hotel in Barcelona and walked right into the wedding reception that was already well underway, now that the sun had set. No one gave her a second look. You can get away with anything if you dress properly, and Villanelle had dressed her best, tonight – a sharp black velvet suit over a mesh shirt. Deathly. Devastating.

Villanelle sits at an abandoned table on her own, since most of the guests have migrated to the dance floor. The happy couple clean the cake off of their faces and resume dancing, too. Villanelle stares at them, unblinking, until several minutes later, the bride’s gaze falls on her. She notices Villanelle staring. Villanelle smiles. She smiles back.

Progress.

“These are the lengths you’ll go to for a meal these days?”

Villanelle recognizes the voice, but nevertheless, turns to see the source of the comment, because it seems impossible she should be hearing that voice here and now. But incongruous as it may be, her ears were correct. Dasha stands next to her, dressed in a silver suit, grinning smugly as the last time Villanelle saw her.

Her hands are around Dasha’s throat less than a second later.

“Careful,” Dasha chokes out. “You are killing the buzz.”

Villanelle glances around, and it’s true, many of the humans have noticed her apparent attempt to strangle an elderly woman and are murmuring in shock and concern. Much as Villanelle wouldn’t mind killing Dasha on the spot, she decides it’s not worth it to jeopardize what she came here for. She can stake the old windbag later.

She releases Dasha, turns to no one in particular and excuses herself in Spanish. “Only playing.”

Villanelle returns to her seat. The bride isn’t watching her anymore. Fair enough.

Dasha takes the seat next to her. “I expected a warmer welcome.”

“I would’ve made you plenty warm. I would gladly set you on fire… if I didn’t have other plans.”

“And what _plans_ bring you here?”

Villanelle silently directs her gaze to the bride, now engaged in a lively dance with her husband.

“Refined tastes now, eh?”

“I’m not going to drink from her,” Villanelle scoffs. “That’s too easy. By the end of this night, I’m going to be railing her.”

Dasha tuts. “You are a mess, Oksana.”

“Villanelle.”

“Children picking spooky names… What is wrong with your proper Russian name?”

“Oksana stayed behind in France in a silver trap.” Villanelle shifts, laying her hands in her lap. “I have evolved.”

“Whatever you call yourself, you are still the same immature child you were before.”

“And you are still the same wrinkly cunt who left me to die.”

Dasha grins and waves this off. “Ach. Bygones.”

“Why have you come?”

“I thought you and I should team up again. For old times’ sake.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

Villanelle rises, but Dasha grabs her by the arm, pulling her back into her seat. “Wait until you hear what I have in mind.”

“Not listening; don’t care.”

“You know your ex has run back to that sad little pack of hunters?”

Villanelle’s face tightens, until Dasha continues, “I don’t know what got into you, setting him free.”

Villanelle relaxes, and rolls her eyes. “My ex-thrall is not any threat.”

“You know they’re coming after you again?”

“Ooh, I’m so scared.” Villanelle wiggles her fingers spookily. “Those idiots could never even track me down without me baiting them.”

“This time, they will. Your ‘friend’ that you set free put a tracker on you.”

Villanelle’s face drops. “No. Konstantin wouldn’t. He _couldn’t._ ”

Dasha’s amused, now. “You think I ran into you by coincidence? I was eavesdropping as they discussed your location, and thought I might give my old protege a warning. Maybe even offer to help you get rid of them once and for all, because I am so kind.”

Villanelle crosses her arms. “What’s in it for you?”

“The joy of seeing you become the proper vampire you are meant to be.” Dasha reaches out and strokes Villanelle’s face. “Look at you. You’ve gone soft. Setting your thrall free. Playing house with humans. You know our kind aren’t meant to settle down.”

“I don’t want to settle down.”

“Not even with Eve Polastri?”

Villanelle bites the inside of her cheek.

“I listened to those hunters for more than a few minutes,” Dasha purrs.

“We’ve gone our separate ways,” Villanelle says, flatly.

“It’s good to have many lovers.” Dasha stares across the hall, where the bride and groom are swaying in each other’s arms. “Marriage, mating for life – that’s for humans with tiny life spans. But most of the time, they can’t make it last their eighty years.”

“Thanks for stopping by, but I am going to stick to my own plans.”

Dasha stands, and fixes Villanelle with a withering look. “I’ll be heading back to London tomorrow night to deal with them. You are welcome to join if you want. Here.” She pulls out a pen, and bends down to write on one of the place-cards on the table. “My cell phone.”

Villanelle takes the place-card, then crumples it in her hand. She stares at Dasha until she fully walks away.

The only type of “bygone” Villanelle believes in is the joy of saying _“bye”_ when someone like Dasha is finally _gone_.

She does get the bride, eventually, in the middle of the night. Dasha threw off her timing, so Villanelle isn’t able to steal her away from the reception like she planned, but she catches up to her later. She climbs up to the balcony of the honeymoon suite of their hotel. Taps on the glass. Never gets invited in, but that isn’t a problem when the bride joins her on the balcony. A few minutes later, the bride is screaming into the night and her blood is filling with oxytocin. Then she crumples into Villanelle. Villanelle clutches her close, absorbing her body heat in the crisp autumn night.

The warmth. The rush. The thrill of the hunt.

As soon as Villanelle feels her skin starting to match the woman’s body temperature, she knows it’s time to throw her off, send her back to her marital bed. Leave her with the memories of getting fucked within an inch of death (though she wasn’t aware of that fact, at least not consciously) for the rest of her stupid human life.

Villanelle leaps off the balcony and heads for the airport. She grabs a bite on the way. Nothing fancy. Sometimes drinking is just sustenance. She’s back to her flat in London in the nick of time before the sun rises.

When she wakes that evening, she stretches out her arms and neck, getting out all the kinks. She gets dressed and tries to think of how to occupy herself for another night.

Even at their most challenging, humans are too easy. She can’t come up with anything to top “bride on her wedding night”. Is she really tapped out after four years of immortality?

No, Dasha’s reappearance is getting to her, that’s all. Dasha always loved to taunt Villanelle about how she didn’t understand immortality – not that she ever shared the grand answers she supposedly figured out for herself. Villanelle thinks Dasha just likes to have something to be condescending about; it really isn’t _that_ complicated. Stay nimble. Try new things. She’s managed so far; she’ll manage again.

Perhaps all she needs is to go for a walk. Once she breathes in the new air of a new night full of new scents, something will come to her. It always does.

She lets herself out of her flat and closes the door behind her. There’s a flier on the doorknob, an advertisement for some restaurant. Villanelle leaves it, but wonders as she descends the stairs, can she get herself taken off those mailing lists? She imagines phoning the restaurant – _Hello there, so kind of you to offer me your coupons for discounts on Pad Thai, but I physically cannot consume your food. Now, if you want to send me one of your delivery people instead…_

At least she can still make herself laugh. As she exits the building, she pauses to take in the sights, sounds, and scents of a new night. And she freezes.

Only for a moment, though. A fraction of a second later, she keeps walking and doesn’t turn her head so as not to alert them. But she knows they are there. She can hear them murmuring, and she caught a good enough glimpse through the window of the hotel across the street. The exact same spot they sat before… they really are clueless. But they’re also persistent. The Silver League, or at least a couple of their members. Staking out her apartment _again_.

Once she’s a block away, and clear of their sight from their vantage point, she stops. She can continue to ignore the Silver League if she so chooses, since those hunters are not very effective at hunting. Or, she can finally swat at the flies that have been buzzing after her for almost two years.

She avoided killing them for so long because she wanted to keep playing, but this particular game has grown boring. Especially when taking Eve out of the equation. The rest of them will never be anywhere near as much fun. And Eve will never be back with them.

Villanelle digs out the crumpled paper from her pocket, and a few minutes later, she’s in the back seat of an Uber with Dasha.

“Stop fidgeting. It’s irritating.”

Dasha reaches over to stop Villanelle’s leg from jiggling, but Villanelle swats her away.

“Why are you so antsy?”

“Just remembering the last time you suggested we take on a group of hunters together.”

“Water under the bridge.”

“ _You_ don’t get to say that!”

“Do you want to stop them from tracking you or not? You can walk away right now if you hate my company. That is, if you’re fine with never sleeping again, in case they sneak up on you…”

Villanelle stews on this in silence.

Dasha glares for a minute, then softens. “I won’t leave you this time.”

“And why should I believe you?”

“Because they have something I want.”

“Ahh.” Of course. Now it makes sense.

“Their leader, Carolyn,” Dasha explains, “We had a run-in a few decades ago. She took something of mine. A necklace. An engraved silver pendant. The only trinket I kept from my human life. Ever since then, I have been biding my time for the right opportunity to kill her and steal it back. I came back to check on the circumstances, and saw that we might have a common interest here.”

“So we both get something out of this.”

“Mutual benefit.”

“That much, I can trust.” Villanelle stops jiggling her leg, and instead starts pulling and pinching at the skin on her arms. “Where is this tracking device, anyway?”

“They didn’t say.”

Villanelle gives up and leaves her skin alone. “You know, I’m super good at being immortal now.”

“Is that so?” Dasha replies automatically, staring out the car window.

“You were always on about ‘learning eternity’. No thanks to you, but I really have it down. I’m not scared of anything.”

At this, Dasha turns. “Ach, you still don’t get it.”

Villanelle scowls, and fires back, mockingly, “ _You_ still don’t get it.”

“Just because you can’t die from a gun, or a car, or cancer, doesn’t mean there are no consequences,” Dasha snaps. “Immortality means playing the long game. The longest game of all.”

“Yes. I know.”

“No you don’t.”

“What makes you such an authority?” Villanelle snaps. “You’ve never given a clear answer of how old you are. For all I know your dusty body could have been turned only a few months before me.”

Dasha’s eyes are stone cold as she says. “Child, I’ve seen empires rise and fall. I’ve done deals with Romulus and Rasputin. Count yourself lucky that I even give you the time of night.”

Villanelle smiles and shakes her head. “You are so full of shit.”

“You’re still a tiny baby in vampire terms. You’d do well to respect your elders. Right here is fine,” Dasha says to the driver, who pulls over abruptly. His heart is going a mile a minute.

Villanelle bites back a laugh at the poor fellow. “Thanks, I’ll leave you a good tip,” she says as she opens the door.

“Thank you, have a nice night.” The driver looks into the rearview mirror to make eye contact. Then, dumbfounded, he turns around for a double take, but they’ve already climbed out of the car.

They walk down the lane, keeping to the shadows, and stare at the house that acts as the Silver League’s headquarters. Villanelle has never made a house call to them in their new location, though, in fact, she is the reason they relocated in the first place.

“How do we get in?”

“This was all your idea,” Villanelle says. “You don’t have a plan?”

Dasha shrugs. “You have a more recent relationship with these hunters. What about your ex-thrall? Could you get him to invite us in?”

“Even if he’s in there right now, I doubt it. He knows me too well.”

They decide to do a bit more reconnaissance. They sneak around the back of the house. There are plenty of windows on the first floor – in fact, one large stretch of windows looking into the kitchen – but breaking the glass won’t do any good unless they get an invitation.

Villanelle climbs up a sturdy elm behind the house, hiding among the leaves, to get a better look at the second floor. One window looks into a master bedroom, which is currently empty. The other looks into a smaller room, perhaps a guest room. The light is off, but there are two people inside. One of the hunters, whom Villanelle recognizes as the woman who was pregnant, at their last encounter. Only she’s not pregnant anymore; next to her, a baby lies in a small crib, fussing and crying.

Villanelle watches silently while the woman goes to comfort her child. She takes the baby in her arms and pats it on the back, trying to make it burp. She turns, which brings the baby face to face with Villanelle. Babies have very good eyesight, and this baby can see Villanelle outside in the night, she knows it. The baby stops crying abruptly and gurgles with curiosity.

Villanelle hears a rustling beneath as Dasha climbs up the tree to join her. She wants to curse at the old vampire, but the noise is surely too quiet for any humans to pick up on. Villanelle keeps her attention on the scene inside the house. The woman hoists the baby up, satisfied that it has stopped crying, and places it back in the crib. Then, she leaves the room.

Villanelle knows this is her chance. She climbs as far out as the tree branch will take her, until she’s practically pressed up against the window. She taps the glass lightly. The baby squirms in its crib, trying to get a look.

Villanelle smiles. The baby blinks. She sticks out her tongue. The baby tries the same, though its face is so squishy it’s hardly noticeable. She crosses her eyes. The baby babbles. She blows a wet raspberry on the glass. The baby laughs, and reaches out its hands, like it wants to be picked up.

And like that, Villanelle feels that implacable signal run through her body. The baby has given her an invitation! It’s all about intent, and this little baby wants Villanelle inside. Perfect.

Villanelle gets her nails underneath the bottom and pries the window open easily with her vampire strength. Then, she leaps through the opening, landing silently on the balls of her feet. The baby laughs, delighted at her stunt.

“Hello, little sausage.” Villanelle stands over the bassinet, and plucks the baby into her arms. He gurgles excitedly. She cradles him close to her chest, using one hand to support his head, covered in a soft moss of curly brown hair.

“Stop making friends with another little baby, and help me get in!” comes the fierce whisper from outside.

Villanelle walks over and holds the baby up to face the window. “Look, it’s Grandma.” She bounces the baby on her hip. “Wave hello.”

“It isn’t working,” Dasha hisses.

“You have to do something nice so he wants you.” Villanelle whispers back. “Make a face or something!”

Dasha rolls her eyes, then tries to mimic what Villanelle did. She sticks out her tongue, but apparently this trick has lost its charm. The little sausage is no longer interested.

“You have to do better than that. He’s falling asleep.”

Dasha curses in Russian and climbs closer. She’s about to jump onto the window jamb, but the leap is awkward, since she cannot risk actually entering. She falls, and ends up catching onto the window sill by her fingertips.

The baby giggles and reaches out its little fingers in delight.

“Try now,” Villanelle whispers. “I think this little boy is a sadist. Is that right?” She coos. “Are you a little, tiny sadist? Yes, you are.”

A moment later, Dasha has climbed through the window and is dusting herself off.

Now that the largest obstacle is cleared, Villanelle finds herself a bit sad that her business with the Silver League will end tonight. Even if they’ve bored her now, they did amuse her effectively for the better part of two years. What will Villanelle do next, once they’re gone?

Maybe, just maybe, she will see what Eve is up to. Not that she’s very eager to get yelled at again for things that aren’t even her fault, but… there’s noting better to do.

“Put that thing away,” Dasha whispers. “We have business to get to, remember?”

“Relax. The hard part is done. Now all we have to do is kill the rest of them and find your necklace.” Villanelle places the baby back in its crib, and pouts. “Goodbye, little sausage. Thank you for letting us in. Your mother is going to die tonight, but you can live.”

As soon as her hands are off the baby, she feels a prick in her neck. A familiar wave of fatigue washes over her as the sedative spreads through her system, and darkness eats away at the edges of her vision.

Her last thought as she crumples to the floor is: _son of a bitch, not again_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah... Did I forget to mention, this final installment of the Thirst-verse will include Villanelle's POV? ;)
> 
> let me know what ya think in the comments, or daydream about getting killed by vampires with me on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xo


	4. Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While planning her next move, Eve runs into an old friend.

Eve wakes before sunset the next night. She didn’t sleep well; she kept waking with anxious visions of the Silver League. Stake-wielding hunters chasing after Villanelle while Eve chases after them, but her legs don’t work properly, and she can’t catch up.

She paces her tiny studio rental, though the pacing only serves to feed her anxiety given how cramped the space is. Reaching under her bed, she takes the hard drive and turns it over in her hands. In this drive is contained a treasure trove of information stolen from the Silver League’s records. If not for Bear stumbling onto it by accident, who knows what might’ve happened?

Eve feels a pang of guilt for killing Bear a few hours ago, but only briefly. The truth is, she feels the best she has in three months. Like she’s finally recovered from a persistent cold; fatigue has left her bones, and fog has lifted from her mind. Bagged blood really _isn’t_ the same.

The problem is, she can’t figure out what to do with this newfound energy until she gets to look through the contents of the hard drive. She doesn’t have a computer in her apartment; she spent so much time in the Bitter Pill office not because she cared so deeply about the topics she was assigned to write about, but so she could use her desk. If only she had thought to steal a computer, since she can’t very well go back to the office now. They’ll have found Bear’s body, and the smashed remains of his computer… honestly, Eve isn’t sure if Jamie will be more sad about the loss of his coworker, or excited at finding a new conspiracy to investigate, so close to home.

Finally, the sun dips below the horizon, and Eve pockets the hard drive, and runs out into the night. She’s absolutely buzzing, ready to make full use of the vampiric speed she’s suppressed for so many months.

She stays off of main roads and she runs. It’s still risky. Eve doesn’t care. She has a good reason to take a risk, for once. Mere minutes later, she’s home.

Eve hasn’t looked upon her old house in months. The last time she was here was the day she found Niko dead. She never felt particular desire to return, and aside from that, if she was spotted around home by any of her neighbors, or indeed her old colleagues in the Silver League, there would be questions about how she is alive, and then, probably some pointy wooden things fired in her direction.

But again, the current situation merits the risk of a visit: Eve needs to retrieve her computer from her study, so she can look through the contents of the drive. Also, it’ll be nice to retreat into her private sanctuary again. She always did her best thinking in there.

She lost her house key months ago, not that it matters, since a simple lock poses no challenge for Eve now. She notes the hole in the door that Villanelle left by breaking the doorknob on their last visit is now patched over with plywood. Maybe one of the neighbors decided to be helpful.

Eve pulls her arm back, to punch through the door once again. There will be a certain catharsis to it… but as she throws all of her force into it, her fist freezes a few inches from the door.

Eve knits her brows together. She tries again, and again, her arm stops short. _Go_ , she tells herself. _Break it. Enter._ Her arm refuses to obey.

She shakes off this weirdness and resorts to her backup plan. She walks around to the window on the side of the house, which is low enough to climb into, and places her fingers underneath the sill, ready to jimmy it up. As her brain sends the order to open the window, her arms refuse to listen, again. She’s paralyzed.

A scream of frustration escapes her lips as it hits her. She can’t go inside, because she hasn’t been invited.

This seems like some sort of oversight, in the rules of vampires. This is _her_ house! She is the one who gets to give out the invitations!

Eve presses her face up against the window. The house looks exactly as she left it, though there’s a huge mountain of mail piled up inside the door. No one has been paying the mortgage for four months. Maybe the house isn’t hers, after all.

 _Still, it’s so unfair,_ she thinks. _No one lives here anymore!_

No chance to say “goodbye” to her bed, or her study, or any of it. Her human life is entirely inaccessible to her. If it’s a sign from the universe to move on, it’s a little on the nose, in Eve’s opinion.

Before leaving, she stops in the back garden and pokes her feet at the loose patch of dirt where Niko is buried. She feels a dim echo of the fury that seized her when she discovered that Nadia made a meal of her husband, but it’s muted by new understanding.

Eve ought to be buried there next to him. For all intents and purposes, she is. Eve Polastri is dead, and has been gone for a while.

Who she is now, Eve isn’t sure. She isn’t Lilith Stern, that much is clear.

She isn’t Villanelle’s partner, either. That option was crossed off on her very first night as a vampire.

It occurs to Eve, that if she’s forced to start over anyway, she can go anywhere she wants. Not Alaska; that’d bring too many painful thoughts with it. Perhaps somewhere in Canada, or even back to Connecticut, where she grew up. Enough people in Connecticut bear resemblance to vampires that she wouldn’t stick out there.

Fuck, if she’s gonna introspect like this, she can at least introspect while she takes care of business. She heads to the nearest bar to seek out her next option.

Eve hasn’t been in a bar since she was human. Why should she? Perhaps they are good hunting grounds, but swiping an inebriated, less-than-aware human from a night out with friends feels a bit too date-rapey to Eve. Maybe that doesn’t matter so much when she’s killing people anyway, but it’d ruin her appetite, in any case.

She obviously can’t partake in the alcoholic offerings, either. The pulsing music is so loud it gives her a headache, even faster than it used to when she had human hearing. So the reason she has come to this crowded bar, tonight, is only to swipe a wallet from the first rich looking prick she sees, and use his credit card to buy herself a new computer. Use that computer to read the drive again, and, if the danger really seems credible – because _maybe_ she was just panicking in the heat of the moment back in the office – then she can make the call of whether it’s worth showing up unwanted at Villanelle’s doorstep to warn her.

Eve shoves in between bodies in the jostling crowd, staring at more men’s asses than she ever would normally, looking for fat wallets, when one body she bumps into lets out a cry of recognition.

“Eve!”

She looks up to address the owner of the ass she was inspecting. It’s Hugo.

There’s no saying no, and a few minutes later he’s charmed a couple of lads in the corner into giving up their table so he and Eve can “catch up”.

He orders drinks for the both of them, and Eve goes along with it. Drinking is easier than eating human food; she can almost convince herself the red wine in front of her is actually blood. It still sends a ripple of nausea through her, but she manages to suppress it. A couple sips here and there should sell her humanity, though Hugo doesn’t seem particularly suspicious – on the contrary, he’s delighted to see her.

“You have no idea,” he says. “We thought you were dead for sure after the fight in the hotel. Then, when Konstantin came back, he said he’d seen you alive, but… none of us figured you’d be long for this world, going ‘round with a vampire.”

“Neither did I,” Eve says.

“We kept our eyes out,” Hugo says. “When all that business went down in Rome…”

Eve’s breath hitches. How much do they know?

“We got some intel that you went into the Peel Palazzo, but couldn’t find proof of you coming out,” Hugo says. “Thought you died inside.” He furrows his brow. “What _did_ happen?”

“It’s a long story.”

Hugo simply raises an eyebrow and takes a swig of his pint.

Eve forces a small sip of wine down her throat to stall, while she calculates how to frame events in a way Hugo will believe. “After Konstantin left,” she begins, “Villanelle got mad at me. I wanted to take down the Peels, and she didn’t. So I went to Rome on my own…”

“She let you go?”

“Um,” Eve chokes. “I snuck out in the daytime while she was asleep, and got on a plane before she could chase me down. Anyways, I went right to Aaron. I don’t know what I was thinking, facing him on my own…” It’s easier to lean on the grains of truth within the lies she’s telling. “Anyway, I don’t remember much of what happened. I know I came _close_ to dying. I woke up the next day in a hospital with a huge scar. That was enough to put me off hunting for good.”

Hugo nods slowly, taking this story in. Eve stops breathing entirely, waiting his response. Finally, he shakes his head. “You’re one lucky son of a bitch, Eve.”

“Funny, doesn’t feel like it.”

“I think you ought to keep hunting, with your luck. Making it out from the scariest group of vampires in all of Europe, not to mention traveling along with one for weeks, and not ending up a snack? What was that like?”

Eve’s mouth tightens. “I wasn’t a thrall, but I wasn’t free. She could’ve killed me at any time. I couldn’t go against her will.” All of that is technically true, she realizes as she explains it. “I still don’t know why she never killed me before.”

“Really.” Hugo smirks. “You have _no_ idea?”

Eve rubs the thin stem of her wine glass, up and down, avoiding his gaze.

Hugo laughs. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those beautiful women who has no clue how other people see her. I expect that from someone my age, but… you ought to know.”

Then he reaches over the table and puts his hand on Eve’s.

“Hugo…”

“I missed you.” He pulls his hand back, and mutters, “Whoa, that came out sappy for someone I only worked with a few weeks, but… it was a good few weeks, you know? Sometimes, I feel like no one around there can take a joke. It’s doom and gloom all the time, and you were kind of a breath of fresh air.” His eyes dart up. “I don’t suppose you want to come back and join us?"

For a moment, Eve entertains the ridiculous idea. Going back to join the Silver League, like nothing had ever happened. But she dismisses the thought as quickly as she conceives it: even if it were possible for her to pretend she never met Villanelle and try to return to hunting, she would get outed at the threshold of Carolyn’s house.

“No,” she tells Hugo. “I’m totally done with all that.”

“Can’t blame you for feeling that way. I get it,” he sighs. “I’m getting kind of tired of it, too. Taking a step back, lately. Fewer shifts.”

“Why not just quit?”

“Not that simple for me.” Hugo gives a grim smile. “You know, my great-grandfather was one of the founding members of the Silver League. At the start of last century, he and some other nobility pooled their fortunes, invested in creating an organized force, more effective than lone hunters… Mid-century, the League was pretty big, but it shrank again the past couple decades. My father opted out of his birthright, but he only got away with it because he made a fortune in the private sector, and agreed to supply funds for the operation. But I don’t have any lucrative escape routes, like that,” Hugo says. “So I’m stuck carrying on the family tradition.”

“That’s a shame,” Eve says.

“But if you ever want to get another drink, or anything…” Hugo’s words come quickly, spilling out of his mouth. “This sounds completely pathetic, but I really want some friends that aren’t from work, that know about all this stuff. You can’t imagine how tiresome it gets trying to hang out with the lads, or go on a date, and pretend all this doesn’t exist.”

“I was married to a non-believer. I get it.”

"Where are you living these days?”

“Here and there.” Eve waves her hand vaguely.

“My flat’s not far from this neighborhood, actually,” Hugo says. “If you ever want to drop by… we don’t have to talk about vampires,” he assures her. “It’d just be nice to not have to tiptoe around it.”

“Maybe.” Eve ponders this. Perhaps staying in contact with Hugo, from a distance, is a good way to learn more about what the Silver League is up to. “I’ll give you my number.”

Hugo raises his glass. “To this cursed life we lead.”

Eve returns his toast, and forces down a hearty sip of wine. Hugo has no idea how appropriate those words are.

An hour later, she’s bought herself a shiny new laptop just before the shop closed for the night. Luckily, Hugo’s credit card went through without issue – Daddy must still help Hugo with his bills.

She makes her way back to her studio, mulling over the conversation she just had. Oddly, she feels more guilty about chatting to Hugo like an old friend, than she does about taking his credit card. At the same time, she can’t help but feel a wash of relief at how he still looked at her the same way. For a brief time, in his eyes, she got to be Eve Polastri again.

Once the laptop boots up, she plugs in the hard drive, and pores through its contents once again. Many of them are everyday operations and records, but even some documents that appear routine – for instance, the logs of weapon inventory – seem to be building to something. Eve notes that their spending has shot up notably in the past three months, since Konstantin returned.

Though, Eve reminds herself not to jump to conclusions. Maybe they’re hunting new, more dangerous quarry, and they’ve forgotten all about Villanelle. She double clicks on Villanelle’s folder, then opens the tracking map. It’s definitely an accurate log of Villanelle’s movements, at least for the times Eve can vouch for; the history matches up perfectly with their travels around the British Isles when they were on the run, as well as their trip to Rome. That’s odd, though; if they knew where Villanelle was that whole time, why did they never come after her and Eve when they were hiding in Ireland?

However, before Eve can puzzle that out, something even stranger distracts her. The tracking history goes back nearly a year, but it does _not_ lead up to the present: the most recent marker is from a month ago, and places Villanelle at her flat here in London. Apparently, she hadn’t gone off to Iceland on her own.

There’s only one thing left to do, then.

Eve stashes the laptop and drive under her bed, locks her studio (she’s more sensible than most vampires, that way), and braces herself to see Villanelle for the first time in months.

When she reaches the apartment building, her fingers tremble nervously as she walks up the stairs. If she still had a heartbeat, it would be racing. What is she supposed to say? _“Hey, Vill! I know it’s been a while, but I came to tell you that the group you’ve never been worried about might be coming back to annoy you?”_ Suddenly, the very prospect of warning Villanelle seems ridiculous, and Eve wants to turn back, and run, but she’s already reached Villanelle’s floor.

Immediately, she notices something odd, and swiftly moves down to the end of the hall to examine it more closely. The doorknob to Villanelle’s apartment has several advertisements for takeout restaurants hanging from it. Eve pulls them off and counts them – five, in all. Apparently the workers that hand out these fliers can’t take a hint that they’re barking up the wrong tree.

But _five_? Villanelle isn’t a messy person, and even if she doesn’t care to keep the takeout menus for use, she’d at least take them off the door, and throw them away.

Eve knocks on the door. No response. She knocks again. A door opens, but not the one in front of her. Eve turns to see the neighbor across the hall, who has opened her door. An old woman. “Are you looking for the stylish young thing?”

“Um, yes.” Eve wonders if this woman has ever suspected she’s living across from a vampire. “Yes, do you know if she’s gone out?”

“Out!” The woman laughs a creaky laugh. “Out somewhere. She hasn’t been home in twenty-nine days, and counting.”

“Oh.” Eve doesn’t know what to say to that.

“If you know her, tell her to come home and clean up her mail.”

“Thanks. I’ll do that.” Eve waits for the old woman to shut her door, though she can still hear that creaky laugh through the apartment walls.

Twenty-nine days. Maybe Villanelle is simply taking an extended trip. It wouldn’t be the first time… but if that’s the case, it’s an awfully big coincidence that the Silver League stopped logging her location twenty-nine days ago, as well. Did she simply lose them? Perhaps, but if they tracked her perfectly for months and months…

Eve’s throat tightens as she realizes there’s a much simpler explanation for this contrived coincidence.

Maybe Eve is too late. Maybe the Silver League have killed Villanelle. Maybe she’s dust.

It sends a shock through Eve’s system. It can’t be… and yet it’s the most logical conclusion.

She’s leaning against the apartment wall, bracing both hands against it to steady herself, when her phone vibrates.

It’s a text from Hugo. _Not to get this text chain started on the wrong foot, but did you by any chance steal my credit card?_

Eve stares down at the screen, absolutely stone-faced. There’s no right choice here, so she seizes onto the only option she can think of.

 _Sorry,_ she types. _Had to have a reason to see you again._

Ten minutes later, she’s outside Hugo’s building. She worries, for a moment, that she may be outed, here, as she tries to enter, but in the very instant Hugo swings open his door, Eve’s brain and body connect a series of cues. _“If you ever want to drop by…”_ combined with him texting her his address, and his clearly welcoming look, now? That adds up to an invitation clear as any Eve’s ever heard.

She rushes over the threshold and takes him in her arms. Hugo lets out a tiny grunt of surprise, but welcomes her touch. He flirted hard enough at the bar; he obviously wants this.

Eve runs her hands over his chest, his back, while she kisses him. She expected the temptation of being this close to his neck to be fiercer, and while it’s certainly present, it’s not so hard to resist as she expected. Still, she keeps her teeth clear of his skin, and tries to slow down her touch. Breaking him would really kill the mood.

She kisses at him over and over, driving the swarm of questions out of her head. This is stupid, but she needs something stupid. She’s so tired of _thinking_. She just wants to feel good, feel something, feel alive.

Hugo seems to be feeling the same, for how graciously he accepts Eve’s advance. He stumbles over to the couch in the middle of his flat, never breaking contact with her. As he falls into the cushion, Eve climbs on top of him.

As she feels the hot rush of blood pumping under his skin, it occurs to her that she hasn’t been intimate with a human in… longer than she can remember. It must’ve been the last time with Niko, and who knows when that was; whenever it was, it certainly wasn’t a remarkable experience.

Viewing it from this new perspective, is, like everything post-transformation, entirely different. Eve takes in every scent, sound, and touch Hugo’s body offers, striving to understand… why was Villanelle so into humans, in this particular way?

 _No._ Don’t think about Villanelle. Don’t think about how she cast Eve out back then; don’t think about where she might be right now.

“Mmmph,” Hugo groans into Eve’s mouth. She pauses, remembering humans do need to breathe, though it seems he wanted to stop so he can speak. “Do you want to go to the bed?” he says. “I’ve got a great down blanket… it’ll warm you up.”

Hugo rubs her arm, and Eve curses. There’s no explaining her temperature, so she doesn’t try; she merely dives in again, kissing him, over and over. She reaches down to unbuckle his belt.

“Hold on,” he mumbles. He pries himself away from her, and gets up from the couch, and ducks into the bedroom. A moment later, he returns, with a box of condoms. Then, he freezes, his eyes wide.

Eve looks behind her, to where Hugo is staring fearfully. She’s an idiot for not noticing sooner. There’s a small mirror hanging on the wall by the door, reflecting everything in the flat, except Eve.

Hugo snaps into action, grabbing a stake off of a bookshelf behind him. He raises it threateningly, but Eve’s on him in a flash, grabbing his arm, holding him tight. He’s no match for her strength.

He yells and struggles to free himself. “Stop screaming!” Eve hisses. “I’m not going to…”

Her reassurance trails off, as she focuses on the entire image in front of her. A stake, tight in Hugo’s hand, that he fully intends to use to kill her. She remembers: he is one of them. He may have killed Villanelle this same way.

Eve wrenches his arms to his side and bites into his neck. She doesn’t feel a scrap of remorse this time, until she’s swallowed a few mouthfuls of blood. Then, it occurs to her: maybe Hugo didn’t do it. He said he wants out, after all. Maybe it was the others. Carolyn, probably. And he’d been so kind earlier, giving Eve the benefit of the doubt… he deserves one last chance, at least.

The solution comes to her in a flash. She remembers the process she read online and hopes the information was accurate. She drinks a few more gulps, then pulls her lips away. Good thing she ate Bear yesterday, after all, because if she had only had the bagged blood in her system, she would definitely not have the restraint to stop after drinking half of Hugo’s blood.

She lays Hugo onto the ground, kneels next to him, and places her hand over his heart.

“Do you, Hugo…” Eve gestures for Hugo to fill in the blank.

“Turner,” he gasps, panting and grasping at his neck.

“Do you, Hugo Turner, swear fealty to me, to follow my every order for the rest of your human life?”

“I…” Hugo’s face scrunches with consternation. He must be debating the noble decision, to decline the offer, and bleed out like a proper proud hunter. A second later, all the fight drains out of his face. “I do.”

Eve props him up, grabs a dish towel from his kitchen, then wraps it around his neck to slow the bleeding.

As Eve steps away from him, he reaches for his stake, where it fell on the floor. Feisty to the last.

“Stop,” Eve says. Hugo freezes. “Drop it.” He does.

The oath worked.

Hugo’s eyes light with new fear. “What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Eve says. “Probably. I need you to tell me something. Who did it?”

“What?”

“The Silver League. I’ll let the rest of you live, but I need to know. Which of you killed her?”

“Who?” Hugo’s eyes widen. “Villanelle?”

“I’m too tired for games. Tell me. That’s an order.”

“She isn’t dead.” Hugo gasps this, still hoarse and weak, but it sounds like a chorus of angels to Eve’s ears.

“What?” She demands. “Where is she?”

“Unless something has changed drastically since I was last there… she’s alive, and, well, not _well_ , chained up in Carolyn’s basement.”

Eve laughs. Once, then again, and continues for a solid minute, because the universe has a great sense of humor, on this one. “Guess I’m not done with that place after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I missed Hugo!
> 
> let me know what you think in the comments, or come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xo


	5. Unbreakable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Villanelle is held prisoner in the Silver League's headquarters, her will is tested with every passing day.

The ground is hard. The room is dark. A lattice of bars criss-cross over Villanelle’s field of vision. Beyond them, walls of bleak gray stone. No windows. She must be underground.

And she isn’t alone.

She groans and sits up. She doesn’t bother testing the metal bars of the cage that encloses her; she knows they’re silver.

The leader of the hunters – Carolyn, Villanelle remembers – takes a step forward to address her. “Welcome to my home. My apologies for not providing a warmer welcome, though it seems you found your own way of getting invited.”

Villanelles eyes focus on the other hunters, standing in a loose group behind Carolyn, including the woman from upstairs, holding her baby sausage in her arms.

Villanelle pulls herself up onto her knees. “Where is Dasha?”

Carolyn ignores the question. “It’s a pleasure to properly meet you, Oksana – my apologies, you prefer to go by Villanelle, these days… Is that correct?”

Villanelle nods slowly.

“I must commend you, Villanelle. Truly, I admire your resourcefulness. Although in this case it wasn’t entirely necessary. We’ve been awaiting your visit for some time, yet, if the invitation came from myself, I suspected you would not enter so willingly. Isn’t that ironic?”

“You sound pretty smug on the other side of those bars,” Villanelle says. “Are you scared to take me on in a fair fight? One of me, six of you – plus the sausage. That gives you a sporting chance.”

“We can kill you, if you’d like,” Carolyn muses. “However, not only would that feel an anticlimax after how long we’ve spent chasing you, it would also be a waste of a valuable opportunity. We’ve done so much study based on theory, hearsay, and limited encounters, but there’s much yet we don’t know about vampire biology. I’d like to learn more while we have a captive subject.” Carolyn smiles placidly. “That is, until we decide what to do with you.”

Villanelle stares dully. “Is that supposed to be a threat?”

“You can receive it however you choose,” Carolyn says. “But make no mistake, your time here shall not be a pleasant experience.” She pauses, then adds, “For you.”

Villanelle scoffs. “I spent three years in a Russian prison. I can take anything.”

 _Unbreakable,_ that’s what she is. She thinks back to another night, with a bus, and a bellow. _“I’m unbreakable!”_ … Eve found it so exciting.

 _Whatever_. Villanelle has been unbreakable since long before she was immortal.

“I’m glad you’re comfortable now,” Carolyn says. “Please do keep me apprised if your feelings change as time goes by.”

* * *

_Consequences._ That’s what Dasha would say, in her tutting, condescending tone. Villanelle is glad they aren’t being held together so she doesn’t have to listen to that old bag lecture her all day and night. _That_ would be torture. She privately hopes that they staked Dasha, only needing one subject for their “experiments”, but in her gut she knows the truth.

All of the _consequences_ that have befallen Villanelle since she became immortal have been Dasha’s fault, so this is just the latest in a list of reasons she should have known better. The next time she sees that wrinkly face, Villanelle will stake first, and ask questions later.

This cage is smaller than her prison cell. She can’t even stand up fully, since the cage is slightly smaller than her full height. Eve might be able to stand, barely. Luckily her muscles don’t atrophy like a human’s would, but it’s still uncomfortable. She gets restless.

It’s hard to tell when a day passes, since there is no natural light in the basement. However, if Villanelle focuses her hearing on the sounds beyond the reach of these walls, she can get a general sense of the time of day by the sounds of traffic outside. Villanelle counts in shifts that the various hunters take watching her. Four shifts make a day, or if not, it’s close enough.

At Carolyn’s direction, early on, there is a lot of testing. They treat her like a lab rat, studying her senses and reflexes as much as they can without getting close. Carolyn sprinkles tiny drops of blood, chemicals, or other scents, and then shines lights at her, measuring how much her pupils dilate. Villanelle doesn’t want to play along, but she doesn’t get much choice in the matter.

One of the younger men, with the thick, shiny hair, has just come in for his shift, and begins setting up equipment for some new round of tests.

“Hey. Pretty boy,” Villanelle purrs. He turns, and she reaches her fingers through the gaps in the bars to beckon. “Come here. I will give you a kiss.”

“Nice try,” he says. “Just because I’m pretty, doesn’t mean I’m dumb.”

“Doesn’t mean you’re not, either,” Villanelle mutters.

“Are you always like this?”

“Hilarious? Charming? Sensational?”

“Look, if you’re going to flirt, I’ll at least give you some helpful material,” he says. “Name’s Hugo, I’m a Leo, and I love hiking. But not like those people who say they love hiking because they walk in the park sometimes. I do it properly.”

“Oh dear, I think I’m in love,” Villanelle drawls.

Hugo sighs, and opens up a case on the table to reveal a machine with several buttons and knobs, connected to a pair of stereo speakers.

Villanelle groans. She’s already sick of these ridiculous sense tests.

Hugo playing a set of tones of various frequencies, noting down her responses. At one very high pitched whine, Villanelle plugs her ears, but it does no good.

“I hear it. Check yes. Can you stop it already?” she says, a little too loud.

Hugo shrugs. “I don’t like it, but it’s my job.”

“Then you should quit.”

“Not that simple.” Hugo flicks a switch on the machine. “Can you hear this now?”

Villanelle sighs with relief. Finally, a tone outside of her range. She shakes her head.

“Oops, turned it off by mistake.”

“This is stupid,” Villanelle snaps. “You want to know how good my hearing is? Your next door neighbor has been binging a show called ‘Selling Sunset’ for the past two days, and the other boy, the younger one, is on the toilet right now, singing S Club 7 to himself.”

Hugo’s eyebrows go up. He’s impressed. Villanelle can’t help but feel a little pleased with herself.

But then his hands go to turn the machine back on. “Sorry,” he says. “Boss’s orders.”

* * *

The next most interesting guard is the third woman, the youngest one. She rarely came out in the field with the other hunters, and as such, Villanelle has only seen her from a distance, before.

She seems much more excited at the union than Villanelle. “It’s nice to finally meet you in person,” she introduces herself. “I’m Elena.”

Elena spends her first guard shift eating crisps from a bag. Her chewing is so loud, it drives Villanelle mad. Besides, it only serves to remind her of how she hasn’t had a drop of blood since they locked her up. It was easy to ignore her hunger at first – she’s gone without drinking for longer stretches than this a few times before – but now it gnaws at her with every breath, reminding her that she ought to do something about it. If only she could.

Meanwhile, Elena munches her crisps, blissfully unaware. “I know you’re not exactly in your finest form right now, but I see what Eve was talking about.”

Villanelle’s ears prick up at that. What did Eve say? But she can’t come right out and ask; she can’t give away the game… She’ll let Elena lead the conversation.

“I have to ask. Did you and Eve ever…” Elena puts down her crisps, holds up two fingers on each hand, then slams the spread fingers together.

Villanelle bites the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.

“Damn, you’ll give me nothing at all?” Elena is genuinely disappointed. “Am I not your type, is that it? Only chat up the ones you’re interested in kissing, or killing, or whatever? Does my blood smell bad or something? I wouldn’t think you’d be so picky, as you are…”

Villanelle wants to respond. There must be something she could get out of Elena, and there’s a correct phrase, a certain lilt of tone, that would tempt her watcher to spill a crucial detail. Normally, Villanelle would produce the words with ease, but now, her head is fuzzy. She’s annoyed and distracted and hungry and not on her game.

Elena crumples her snack bag and tosses it in the trash. “Oh well. My shift’s done. Chat another time.”

That makes four. Villanelle leans down to the floor and uses her fingernail to carve another scratch in the line of tally marks she’s accumulated on the floor.

Elena turns at the grinding sound. “Oi. You don’t have to do that. I’ll gladly tell you how long you’ve been here.”

Villanelle looks up. Logic tells her she can’t trust Elena, but her gut tells her she can.

“Let’s see, we got you in on the sixteenth?” Elena murmurs to herself. “Five days.”

Villanelle looks down at her tally. She adds another tick mark.

* * *

Villanelle examines every inch of her cage thoroughly. She does it subtly, carefully, when they aren’t watching closely, so that if she discovers anything useful, they won’t know what she knows. Unfortunately, there’s nothing to discover: though she probes every inch of the metal bars that hold her for any weak point, any joint that may be fashioned of anything less than pure silver, she finds none. Clearly, they didn’t skimp on the expenses.

She brainstorms other options, of course. There’s no tunneling out, since the silver bars form a grid on the floor of her cage, too. The most she can do is scratch at the exposed gaps. Keep her “calendar” on the stone floor.

The weak points of her prison, then, must be the humans themselves. She waits keenly for every time Carolyn comes down to the basement. It took a few visits for Villanelle to pinpoint it among all the other stimuli, but there’s a small, unmistakable rattle of something attached to Carolyn’s person. The tinkling of lightweight bits of metal jostling against each other. The keys to Villanelle’s cage; she’s sure of it. Carolyn is absolutely the sort of person to keep the keys on her at all times, never entrusting them even to her most loyal followers. If only Villanelle can figure out a way to get her hands on them… but so far, she has no ideas.

Carolyn is the toughest, but the others are more malleable. Still, they’re proving more difficult to distract than Villanelle had hoped, but she will wear one down eventually. It’s a waiting game, and Villanelle is quite confident that she can win any test of wills with this pack of self-righteous mortals.

One day, the mother, Jess, takes over for her shift, cooing softly to her baby as she carries him down the basement steps.

“More hearing tests today?” Villanelle asks. “Or are you going to shine lights in my face?”

“Tell you what,” Jess says. “My head’s killing me, and the little one is hungry. How about we skip the testing today, and it’ll be our little secret from Carolyn.”

“What’s in it for me if I don’t tell on you?”

Jess chuckles and sits down, not paying much attention to Villanelle, as she breastfeeds the little sausage.

“Your baby is really cute.”

“Thanks,” Jess murmurs, smiling down at him.

“So cute I could just eat him up.”

Jess stops smiling.

“Did you always want to be a mother?”

“To be honest, James here was a surprise,” Jess says. “But a welcome one.”

“I’m glad I never have to worry about that,” Villanelle mutters to herself. “Imagine a thing growing inside. Taking all of your strength and stealing it away for itself…”

“You know they even steal the calcium from your bones?” Jess whispers, then clutches her jaw. “I got terrible toothaches.”

“What a horrible creature. A parasite.”

Jess says nothing.

Villanelle groans. “I know, I heard it.”

* * *

Villanelle eagerly anticipated this meeting for days, but somehow, in their shift schedule, Konstantin was never assigned to watch her… until the sixth day.

He enters the basement silently, and Villanelle can hardly believe her eyes, she’s so happy to see him. “Hey! Konstantin!”

He sits down at the small table, and says nothing.

“I know you can hear me. Come on, old friend.” Still nothing. Villanelle pulls herself up onto her knees, and leans against the front of the cage. “Okay, fine, I will say it. I’m sorry. But I want you to know I treated you better than most vampires would. I could’ve killed you. Or I could’ve made you serve me for months and _then_ killed you. That’s what Dasha would’ve done.”

Finally, Konstantin makes eye contact with her. He makes his grumpy face that he used to make whenever she told him to stop speaking. Cheeky.

“Come on,” she presses. “Our time together wasn’t so bad. I got you snacks! And then I let you go. Most vampires would never even consider that. Come on, Konstantin. For old time’s sake. Let me out?”

At last, Konstantin speaks. “So you admit, you are starting to grow uncomfortable?”

“I’m in a tiny cage, what do you think?”

“I thought you said to Carolyn that you can handle anything.”

“At least in prison, they gave us three meals a day, even if it was tasteless shit. Now, come let me go before any of the others come back. I’ll make it worth your while, huh? Kill anyone you want to be killed. Or rob a bank for you or something. Anything you want, I can get it.”

“I have enough money, and I don’t want anyone dead.”

“I’ll turn you, huh? Wouldn’t that be nice, to live forever?”

“You really think I am foolish enough to let you bite me again?”

“Come on! I let you go.” Villanelle slams her hands against the bars in front of her. “ _I let you go!_ ”

“Maybe if your little friend Eve were here, she might convince me to go easy on you.”

Villanelle’s entire body twitches. She would love nothing more than to leap across the room and tear him apart. But she can’t show her impotent rage; she can’t let him know how frustrated she is.

She makes her voice as calm and even as she can, and asks, “When?”

“What?”

“And where? I don’t want it on me anymore.”

Konstantin laughs that halting laugh of his and points to a spot on the back of his head. Villanelle reaches up to the same spot on her head, lifting up her hair, running her fingers over the skin until she feels a tiny bump, like a grain of rice. The tracking chip, embedded under her skin.

“It was a early on,” Konstantin says. “While you slept. You were clever, using your orders to strip me of my freedom and close every loophole. But you did not close them immediately. I knew I wouldn’t have long, so I took the only opportunity I saw. I didn’t know if it would ever come in useful, but…”

Villanelle digs her nail into the bump at the base of her scalp, and pinches tight. She grits her teeth to keep from crying out as she breaks skin, and feels a dribble of blood. She presses the small bump until it wriggles out. She brings it up close to her eye for examination. A tiny metal chip, coated in red. She crushes it to dust between her fingers.

Konstantin sighs, and heaves himself up. “For old time’s sake.” He reaches into his coat, and pulls out something small and dark and squishy. It isn’t until he tosses it through the bars of the cage that Villanelle processes what it is: a bag of blood.

All conscious thought leaves her head as she ferociously tears into the plastic and drinks it down in one gulp. She hasn’t had a drop since she got here. This is hardly enough, but it’s something. It fills her with a warm sense of relief, for about three seconds, until her stomach aches for more.

“How did you manage this?”

“I told Carolyn you get crafty when you are hungry.”

“How would you know that?” Villanelle cocks an eyebrow. “You’ve never seen me this hungry.”

“I get crafty, too.” He winks.

* * *

So the days creep by. Konstantin gets her a small portion of blood occasionally, but it’s nowhere near enough to satisfy her. Just enough to give her the energy to keep worrying about how hungry she is.

Outwardly, she shows no clue of this. To Carolyn, she must continue to be unbreakable. For all eternity. If they expect to wear her down, they’ll have to wait a long time. Villanelle will wait until every one of these humans wrinkles and dies, if that’s what it takes. She will still have the last laugh.

They keep testing her. Sometimes it’s scents, and they’ll bring up vials of all sorts of different things to see how she reacts. Or ask her to identify them. Different plants and herbs – those aren’t so bad. One day is entirely dedicated to urine samples from different predatory animals. Do they expect for her to raise her hackles and go into a territory dispute, like a wild animal? No, instead, all that happens when she smells a wolf’s scent markers is that she wrinkles her nose, because it’s disgusting.

One day (eight days in, so Elena told her earlier), Konstantin arrives and tosses her allotted portion of blood through the bars. Villanelle tears into it without hesitation, then, after a couple of mouthfuls, gags, and spits it on the floor. “What is this shit?”

“Cow’s blood,” Konstantin says. “Don’t look at me. Carolyn said, if we are going to feed you we also have to learn from it. Learn if other types of blood have the same effect.”

“This is useless to me.” Villanelle shoves the bag out between the bars, where it flops to the ground with a wet slap and begins leaking all over the stone floor. “You’d get more from it than I. Like a rare steak. Dig in.”

Konstantin is unamused. “I am trying to help you.”

“If you really want to help me, unlock this cage. I will do the rest.”

“I can’t.”

“Come on, Konstantin! I want to stretch my legs. I want to bite into something that isn’t made of plastic.”

“You ever hear that saying, ‘what goes around, comes back around’?”

“Obviously.”

“I was trapped like this, once.”

Villanelle rolls her eyes. “I’m sorry for leaving you. I didn’t mean to. Now, you have made your point, we are even, and you can let me out.”

“Oh no,” he says. “We are not even. Every passing day it will get worse.”

“So I am supposed to learn a lesson?” Villanelle sneers. “I spent three years in prison. I already know it sucks.”

“Different lesson,” Konstantin chuckles. “Try me again after it’s been a month.”

Konstantin groans as he stoops to pick up the discarded bag of blood. After he straightens up, he drops a rag on the puddle of blood and steps on it so it soaks up the mess.

Villanelle leans up against the door of her cage, and hisses, “As soon as I get out of here, I am going to kill you.”

Konstantin chuckles. “I am sure you will.”

“Your whole family, too. I will skin them alive.”

* * *

A few hours later, Kenny arrives to relieve Konstantin of guard duty.

Villanelle never tried much with Kenny. He’s the most boring guard. He rarely talks to her, and never gets riled up. He seems to have absolutely no interest in her, or in anything, for that matter. He’s like a robot.

Despite Konstantin’s smug self-righteousness every time he delivers her a bag of blood, hunger gnaws at her constantly. Aside from being bagged, it’s not nearly enough – enough to keep her alert, and hyper-conscious of how hungry she is. And since she missed a portion today with that stupid cow's blood, she has little energy for anything beyond the essential, sitting in her cage, and even lifting her head feels like a great effort.

“Hey. Boy.” He doesn’t react, so Villanelle raises her voice. “Kenny, that’s your name, right?”

“I know you try to play mind games with the others, but I won’t have any of it.”

“I’m too tired to play with you even if I wanted to. I need your help.”

At this, Kenny tunes in, confused. “You’re a prisoner. I’m not really in the business of trying to help you.”

“Only a tiny request.” Villanelle gestures weakly in front of her. “The door of this cage, it rattles.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Your ears are too weak for it. But there’s some kind of vibration from this house, or the ground. Maybe it’s vibrations from the Underground coming through the earth. But it rattles. I can’t fall asleep. Please, tighten it so it stops rattling.”

“Tighten it,” Kenny says slowly. “You want me to _tighten_ the door.”

“Some tape or rope or something, I don’t care. Anything to make it stop.” Kenny says nothing. “Please. I’ll be good when you do your tests, so long as I don’t have to hear this annoying sound all night. I want to sleep.”

Still nothing. Kenny is the worst guard.

“Where’s the pretty one?” Villanelle prods. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Hugo hasn’t been coming in as much lately,” Kenny says. “Personal stuff.”

“Good for him,” Villanelle says. “I hope he grows the balls to quit one day.”

Kenny has nothing to say to that. _God, he is boring_. Then, abruptly, he stands and exits the basement. Maybe going to take a loo break; Villanelle idly wonders what S Club 7 song it will be this time. She half-dozes off in the emptiness of the basement, until who knows how many minutes later, when she wakes at the sound of footsteps coming back down the stairs.

Kenny is back, holding a roll of duct tape. “Would this work?”

Villanelle blinks awake and murmurs, “Yes. Thank you.”

Kenny walks over to wrap the tape around the cage door. As soon as he comes close, Villanelle moves like lightning, reaching her hands through the gaps in the bars and locking onto his shoulders. She wrenches his body close, and presses her face through the gap to bite into the side of his arm.

Hardly her most elegant work, but she takes pride in it nonetheless, and after nine days with only an occasional pouch of blood to stay her hunger, Kenny’s blood is like heavenly ambrosia as it hits her lips. She laps it up eagerly, as much as she can, while Kenny cries out in alarm.

It isn’t long before the rest of them come running. It isn’t long before they aim their silver gun and launch another dart at her neck. Villanelle hardly minds; in fact, she welcomes the soothing grip of the tranquilizer as it seeps through her system.

* * *

When Villanelle wakes, she feels much better, already. She managed _almost_ a decent meal out of Kenny; getting put to sleep again was completely worth it.

She blinks the drowsiness from her eyes and sees Carolyn standing across the room, arms folded.

As Villanelle wets her lips to speak, she notices there’s still some blood caked around her mouth. She swipes her tongue around to clean up every last bit. Carolyn watches, stone-faced.

“Did you save him in time?”

“Kenny’s in stable condition, recovering upstairs.”

“Tell him thanks for the donation. And for the door.” Villanelle tries to stand up, to the extent the cage allows, because for the first time in days she has the energy to do so. However, when she tries to move, she is pulled back by a new set of restraints. There are new silver shackles around her wrists, ankles, and neck, limiting her movements even more than before – essentially, chaining her to the floor.

“I think we’ve learned what we needed to from this little experiment.” Carolyn calmly strides over to the cabinet of weaponry against the wall, and pulls out a bow. Then, she walks closer, and stops right in front of the cage. “It seemed unsporting to take you out while you were unconscious, but I do have other items to attend to today, so I will make this quick.”

Villanelle stares while Carolyn loads the bow with a pointed wooden bolt. Carolyn doesn’t seem to be bluffing, and Villanelle doesn’t like her odds of fighting back in this setup.

“I suppose after how long the chase has been, a few words are in order. I don’t have anything formal prepared, so forgive me for speaking off the cuff.” Carolyn clears her throat. “This is for all the countless victims you’ve taken, for what you did to Konstantin, and, brief though her time with us may have been, what you did to Eve…”

“Wait.” Something in Carolyn’s tone seems off. “What do _you_ think I did to Eve?”

“Pardon?”

“You didn’t know?” Villanelle makes herself comfortable as she can, with the chains. “Eve’s like me now.”

Carolyn has no immediate retort, and her mouth falls open for one second before she recovers her aloof veil of authority.

Villanelle snickers. “I thought you were supposed to be good at your job. Wow. Okay.”

“You turned Eve yourself.”

“Yeah.”

Carolyn knits her brows together. “I am surprised in that case, that you the two of you were not working in tandem.”

“We were,” Villanelle says, “but we each had some independent business to attend to.”

“So she isn’t looking for you, right now?”

Villanelle hesitates. _Is_ Eve looking for her? No, probably not. What reason would she have? Regardless of the truth, it’s more beneficial if Carolyn believes…

“You know Eve…” Villanelle says, all breath. “Take a guess.”

“Very well. It seems we can’t dispose of you yet, after all.” Carolyn unloads the bow and tucks it back in the cabinet.

“Yes. I am your very important bait!” Villanelle claps her hand together, rattling her chains with a pleasant jingle. “Where is Konstantin? I would like another bag of blood, please. Kenny was delicious, but I didn’t get to finish him off, so I’m still a bit peckish.”

Carolyn’s hands twitch slightly at her side. “I’ve always been curious about whether or not vampires can die of starvation.” She pauses, deep in thought. “I’ve heard conflicting accounts. I’d like to know for sure.” She turns toward the stairs.

“No.” Villanelle laughs nervously. “You need me alive. You need me to get Eve.”

Carolyn pauses at the foot of the stairs, and turns over her shoulder. “You’d better hope Eve gets here quickly, then.”

“No. No!” Villanelle pulls at the chains, and leaps forward, pressing her face between the bars of her cage. “I will kill you. All of you.”

But Carolyn is already retreating up into the house.

“I will drink you all dry and dance on your graves!” Villanelle screams curse after curse on each of the hunters’ names. She snarls. She howls. She roars until her throat is raw. At some point the roars start coming out more clipped, more choked. Villanelle hates this; she wouldn’t want anyone to mistake them for sobs.

Not that it really, matters, though. There’s no one to hear them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh oh!!!!
> 
> let me know what ya think in the comments, or speculate on vampire biology w me on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xo
> 
> Also p.s. I think I have confused some people with the timeline here so [here’s](https://twitter.com/not_breakable/status/1299840145282260992?s=21) my attempt to clarify how Eve and V’s stories line up


	6. Tresspass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve formulates a plan to break into the Silver League and rescue Villanelle, with help from Hugo.

“Here.” Eve hands Hugo a pad of gauze and a bottle of antiseptic. He struggles, trying to affix the gauze over the fresh wound on his neck, and Eve reaches out to assist him. He slaps her hand away. Eve scoots to the other end of the couch and lets him deal with it.

Hugo hasn’t said a word since she returned with the medical supplies. Eve doesn’t know how to start the conversation. It feels odd to order Hugo around, and honestly, she doesn’t want to do it more than necessary.

“Hugo…” Eve sighs. “I know this doesn’t look great. I’m sorry it had to be this way, but if you’ll hear me out…”

Hugo lays the tape to secure the bandage to his neck and pats it gingerly. “Don’t have a choice, do I?”

“First of all, I’m sorry. I really don’t enjoy doing this,” Eve says. “I don’t _want_ to kill or anything. It’s not like I lost my soul, or changed my personality. I just have a different… constitution.”

Hugo avoids her gaze. Hard to endorse the lifestyle of someone who just drank half your blood.

“It’s me,” she pleads. “It’s Eve. I’ve been through a lot, but I’m still the same person you knew. I still want the same things…”

“You mean, Villanelle.”

Eve pauses. “Yes.”

“And just like before, you’re willing to put other people in danger because of her.”

Eve has no rebuttal for that.

“Shit, I guess you really haven’t changed.”

A bit of Hugo’s old tone comes back. Eve wonders if maybe, they can salvage some sort of friendship, even in this awkward arrangement. But it certainly puts a damper on things as, while Hugo feasts on Indian takeaway to replenish his depleted blood, Eve has to lay down some basic orders like: _don’t tell the Silver League you’re my thrall, don’t warn them I’m coming, and don’t indicate to them in any way that I’m a vampire now._

“No more contact with them, private or otherwise, unless I say so,” Eve says, to sum up.

“Got it. What’s next, master?”

The words form in Eve’s throat: _Stop calling me Master_ , but the hypocrisy is too real, so she swallows them. “Now, can you help me figure out what to fucking do?”

“You’re asking me?”

“First off, you know what I’m walking into. And second off, I care what you think.”

“That’s a weird feeling.”

“Get used to it.” Eve looks at the emptied Indian food containers. “Are you still hungry? Do you want anything else?”

“Have you seriously already forgotten what a normal amount of food is for humans? Guess that’s nice, if it means if you won’t judge me for the amount I just inhaled.”

“I just want you to be comfortable,” Eve says. “I don’t want this to be any weirder than it has to be.”

“It’s officially weird.”

“I know.”

They sit in an awkward silence, for a few minutes. Eve itches to order Hugo to say something, to break the silence, but she stifles that urge.

“If you truly want me to help,” Hugo says, finally, “I’m going to need to know what _really_ happened with you and Villanelle. Director’s cut. Unrated.”

Eve squirms and faces away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“If you truly don’t want to talk about it, you’ll order me to shut up.”

Eve swallows. She prepares herself. She tells him all of it, from the moment she and Villanelle fell out the hotel window, to the last time they fought.

“Wow.”

“I know, it’s… a lot.”

“Everything makes a lot more sense, now.” Hugo shakes his head. “I can’t believe we thought you died. Should’ve known better. You always were a lucky son of a bitch.”

Eve chuckles. “If this is luck, it’s overrated.”

“You’re a super-strong immortal, and I’m a sad sack full of Indian food bound to obey your every order, so don’t you dare whine to me about misfortune.”

“There’s one thing that’s been bugging me, so I have to ask,” Eve says. “If you had this way of tracking Villanelle, the whole time we were running, why didn’t you come after us?”

“We didn’t.”

Eve pulls out the hard drive. “How’d you get this log of all her movements for years, then?”

Hugo cracks his knuckles. “Right. Technically the tracker was on her the whole time. But we had no clue about it until Konstantin came back. He stuck it on her early on, but couldn’t do anything ’til he got back to us.”

The words come into Eve’s ears like they’re traveling underwater as she puts it together.

“You mean… It’s my fault.”

“What?”

“I told her to let Konstantin go. If I hadn’t, he never would’ve gone back to you, and you’d never have been able to track her down so easily…” Eve feels sick to her stomach. “It’s my fault.”

“Hey,” Hugo says, in a wearily upbeat tone. “It’s not all your fault. That’s pretty rude to say, actually, disregarding all the work we did for months preparing to trap her. The tracker was a pretty small piece of it, really. There were so many important elements we pulled out of the wreckage of the Peel situation… not to mention…”

“Hugo,” Eve interrupts him. “I just want to get Villanelle out. And if I can, I’d really like to do it without killing anybody.”

“Easy,” Hugo scoffs.

“The more you help me, the more likely I’ll be able to do it without hurting them.”

“Even if I trust you, Eve, do you think Villanelle is going to go peacefully once you set her free?”

Eve hadn’t considered that, but Hugo makes a very valid point. Villanelle is hardly a pacifist at her best, and after being subjected to a month of misery and humiliation… Eve’s not sure she can stop Villanelle from going on a murderous rampage.

“Not that it matters,” Hugo sighs. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

“You’re one of them, so your presence wouldn’t raise any alarms,” Eve says. “Maybe the easiest thing is just to have you go in and free her, right? Once you unchain her, she should be able to do the rest.”

“If you truly don’t want me to get hurt, you won’t do that,” Hugo says quickly. “There’s no way that plan ends well for me. Best case scenario, I set loose a hungry vampire who has no emotional attachment to me whatsoever. I mean, she hit on me once, but I don’t think she meant it.”

Eve wants to ask about that, but Hugo’s already continuing. “More likely, the others figure out I’m being controlled and stop me, possibly kill me, or at least lock me up, and then come try to kill you.”

“They already want to kill me. They want to kill all vampires.”

“Not if you run now. Not if you never cross paths with them again.”

Eve imagines, for a moment, running off, like she did earlier that night. She could be someone new, and never think about the Silver League or Villanelle ever again. Then, the knot in her stomach reminds her it’s her fault Villanelle is trapped.

“That’s not an option,” she says, firmly.

“Well, neither is sending me alone.”

“You’re pretty sassy, for a thrall,” Eve comments. “Ugh. I guess I have to go in, then…”

In theory, it shouldn’t be hard to free Villanelle herself, once she has Hugo help her inside the house. There are a lot of them, but they’re humans. She can overpower them easily. _Too_ easily. She doesn’t want to resort to snapping necks just because it’s easy…

But also, she reminds herself, she shouldn’t underestimate the Silver League. They captured Villanelle. Clearly, they’ve updated their strategies.

Eve thinks about it from both sides. Vampires have the advantage in strength, speed, durability. The only way humans ever get the upper hand is with cleverness. But Eve is strong _and_ clever, isn’t she? All she has to do is anticipate their clever moves and outsmart them, and she gets the full advantage.

So she falls back onto her favorite pastime: research. She lets Hugo rest and recover while she throws herself back into the mindset of a hunter. If she were in the Silver League’s shoes, how would she deal with a vampire invader? And then, how can she, Eve, protect herself from their likely moves?

She also steels herself for the possibility that, if push comes to shove, she might have to kill one of her former friends. She’s less bothered by that prospect itself, than by the fact that it doesn’t bother her. What’s happened to her? A few months ago, she found death so horrible. She thought all vampires deserved to die for taking human lives. Now, she’s got a body count of four – two vampires, two humans – and each one causes less hesitation than the last.

Has Eve changed fundamentally, or is it her understanding of the world that’s changed? It was so easy for her to look down on killing, before. When in spite of all her dreams, she still believed vampires were fantasy creatures. When she’d never been in a real life-or-death situation.

Now, morality is mostly eclipsed in her mind by survival. Mostly, not completely. She meant what she said to Hugo; she will do whatever she can to avoid hurting the other members of the Silver League. But if there’s no other choice… is it any different than them killing vampires to protect other humans? Is it any different than Carolyn aiming her crossbow at Eve’s heart, ready to kill one of her own hunters if it meant stopping Villanelle for good?

Christ, she’s getting too philosophical. She refocuses on the research, then gets a little sleep on the couch, for an escape from her thoughts.

The next night, as soon as the sun’s down, she heads for the hardware store to equip herself.

“Can I help you?” a bearded salesman asks.

“What kind of tools do you have that can cut through silver?”

“Making jewelry, eh?” The salesman points down to one aisle with a selection of jeweler’s tools. Eve had been hoping for something more of the chainsaw or blowtorch variety, but upon closer inspection, she finds some of the finer tools very inspiring. She pores through the various knives and saws, throwing plenty of options into her basket – Hugo’s credit card will take care of the bill.

She wanders the other aisles to see if anything else strikes her as useful, and grabs a few more things. Can’t hurt to over-prepare, after she saw how much the Silver League was spending on weaponry, lately.

On her way back to Hugo’s, Eve goes out of her way to pass by Carolyn’s house. She hides in the bushes of a house across the street, thoroughly shrouded in shadow. She can see the house clear as day, and even view a bit of the living room through a gap in the curtains. No one is in view; it’s just as well. The only room she needs to see into, is the one with no windows.

She recalls her first day working for the Silver League, when she arrived so shocked to find they worked out of Carolyn’s personal residence. Ironically, she understands the usefulness of the barrier now more than ever, as it stops her from entering. But she has Hugo to invite her in; that’s an advantage they can’t account for.

“Looking for someone?”

The voice is too close, which means the approach must have been too silent. Eve’s body reaches the correct conclusion before her brain does and launches a blow at the vampire who appeared beside her in the night.

Eve gets a look at the victim after her hand connects with her face – it’s a small, old woman. For a split second, processing the fact that she just hit a small, old woman with enough force to punch through solid steel, Eve’s guts twist in horror.

Of course, it’s no regular old woman. The vampire reels back with the force of the blow, but grins, and charges at Eve, launching a few hits of her own.

Eve’s never fought another vampire before, not like this. The woman’s punches actually _hurt_ as they land on Eve’s chest and shoulder. Eve might as well be pummeled with cannonballs. The experience is oddly novel; Eve hasn’t truly felt pain in the past three months, not encountering anything that posed a threat to her immortal body.

Now, she’s going toe to to with another vampire for the first time, and she has to learn on her feet. What she lacks in experience, she decide she will make up for in tenacity. She grabs at the other vampire’s shirt – a garish velvet sweatsuit, really, and lifts her up by the collar. She notices a name embroidered on the vampire’s jacket: _Dasha_.

“Well, Dasha? Who are you?” Eve hisses. “And what’s your problem?”

“You hit _me_ first, Eve Polastri.”

Eve places Dasha down on the ground. Dasha paces and tuts, muttering something low in Russian.

“What do you want from me?”

“I think you and I have a common goal.” Dasha nods her head in the direction of Carolyn’s house.

“You also want to get in there?”

“Let’s team up.”

“No offense,” Eve says, “but I have no idea who the hell you are. Why should I trust you?”

“Our kind have to stick together,” Dasha says, sticking her hands in her pockets, standing straight as an arrow. “The vampire world is small; we fight for our own. You and I have a good friend in common.”

Eve furrows her brow. “You know Villanelle?”

“Oksana never mentioned me?” Dasha asks. “Rude thing never learned to respect her elders. Ach, children.”

“Hold on,” Eve says. “You’re also trying to get her out? How’d you know she’s–”

“We came here together,” Dasha explains. “Common goal, before. Strength in numbers, only the humans managed to capture her. I was able to escape, and didn’t want to return to meet the same fate. But if you and I worked together…”

Eve considers this. There is strength in numbers, but hasn’t she already come to the conclusion that her main challenge isn’t strength; it’s how to cleverly get in and out without bluntly murdering all of her old friends?

“One more thing I should mention,” Dasha says. “I have already been invited inside.”

Eve pauses. That is a notable advantage. Still, something doesn’t sit right.

“It’s very kind of you to offer,” she says. “But I work better alone.”

Dasha scowls. “Even Oksana was not too proud to accept my help. Very well, Eve Polastri. I will be in this spot tomorrow at midnight, if you reconsider. I will wait for ten minutes.”

“Have a great night.” Eve rolls her eyes, picks up her bag from the hardware store, and heads back to Hugo’s.

“You’re really taking this siege thing seriously, eh?” Hugo says, examining the materials Eve bought.

“With all the weapons and silver you guys have prepared, I’d be an idiot not to arm myself,” Eve says. She pulls out a sheet of metal, and some heavy-duty shears to cut it down. “Do you have a sewing kit?”

Eve grabs one of Hugo’s button-downs from his closet – it’s large for her, but that’s a good thing, in this scenario – and brings it over to the couch, where she sets to work hemming it. While she works, she recounts her meeting with the old Russian vampire.

“She said she knows Villanelle,” Eve says. “And it’s not that I don’t believe that, but… something seems off. I can’t say why, but I don’t trust her.”

“Could it be that she’s a bloodsucking fiend?”

“Watch who you’re talking to.”

“Valid reason to give you the creeps, that’s all I’m saying.”

“But I feel like I’d be an idiot to look a gift vampire in the mouth.” Eve sighs. “What’s your read on this, Hugo? Can I trust her?”

“Why don’t you _order_ me to tell you?”

“Are you seriously gonna make me order you over something so small? I just want to know what you think.”

Hugo takes several seconds before he responds. “I think… going right into the belly of the beast, it might not be bad to have more vampire hands on deck.”

“Okay, then. Go get some sleep, because we’re meeting Dasha at midnight tomorrow.”

The night of the rescue operation, Eve dresses herself like a gladiator preparing for battle. The blue button-down shirt she stole from Hugo sits awkwardly on her chest. She doesn’t need a mirror to know it’s not her sexiest look, but it’ll have to do. She arms herself with some of her other tools, then turns to assess Hugo.

“Button up,” she tells him, not caring that it came out as an order. She’s grateful that she bit Hugo low on his shoulder so the bandage can be covered, once he actually buttons his shirt to the top.

“Once we get in there, I order you to do everything in your power to pretend you aren’t my thrall, okay? Maybe it’s a long shot, but if we pull it off, it’s the easiest way to finish this bloodlessly. You have to convince the rest of them that you’re still with them, you’ve still got your free will. And convince them that I am still human, too.”

“Okay, master,” Hugo says. “I don’t think you’ll fool them long, though.”

“I fooled you, didn’t I?”

“So what’s the plan? This other vampire sneaks in the back to distract them, while I invite you in, and then you rush in and kill everyone who gets between you and Villanelle, or something?”

“Or something,” Eve says. She checks her watch. Eleven forty-five. Time to go.

They meet Dasha across the street at midnight. She doesn’t offer any greeting, simply hisses, “Why would you bring a human?”

“He’s my thrall,” Eve explains. “And he’s one of them. He’s my ticket inside.”

“Not bad,” Dasha admits. “So you are taking the front?”

“Yeah,” Eve says. “I figure, since you already have access, you could slip in the back, or a window… they’ll be less likely to stop us both.”

“Eve,” Hugo prods.

“Right. One more thing,” Eve says to Dasha. “We’re trying to do this without killing any of the humans.”

Dasha stares at Eve like she’s just sprouted a second head.

“If possible,” Eve says. “Just… uh… cleaner, that way.”

“I make no promises,” Dasha says with disdain, as if the mere thought of letting the humans walk away alive gives her acid reflux.

Then, Dasha vanishes into the night, and Eve nods to Hugo. “You’re up. Remember your orders?”

“Of course, master.”

Hugo walks across the street and rings the doorbell.

Eve waits in the shadows, watching. She feels wired, like her whole skin is electrified. She’s about to see her old friends, again. She’s about to see Carolyn, who in their last encounter, was ready to kill Eve if it meant killing a vampire with her. And she’s about to see Villanelle.

Eve laughs at the thought that she’d been nervous to see Villanelle last night, when the only awkwardness was that they hadn’t spoken since their break-up. Now, her fear takes much more potent form.

She’s hardly nervous about her chances of success in her plan. She’s only a little nervous about the fact that she might have to use a little violence along the way. She’s absolutely terrified at the fact that, even if she gets in there and frees Villanelle, playing the perfect hero, Villanelle may never forgive her.

Her fear will have to wait, because someone just answered the door for Hugo. Eve peers through the doorway. Elena. They talk a bit. Elena’s first question isn’t why Hugo has come; it’s _why are you all buttoned up?_

Eve curses under her breath. If Hugo’s tendency to wear his shirts ridiculously open is what foils this plan, she’ll burn the whole house down, if she has to.

Hugo smooths it over, though, and makes up an excuse about how he got bored while on his break from work, and decided to come back in to help. A moment later, they both walk back inside and shut the door.

Eve waits two minutes, as they discussed, before silently sneaking across the street, and hiding up against the house, impossible to spot from the windows, until the door swings open.

Hugo pokes his head out, and hisses at Eve. “Come on inside, then!”

Eve enters the house she hasn’t been in since her human life. It looks the same as ever, which is oddly unsettling, now that Eve knows it’s also serving as a prison.

“Where’s she being held?” she whispers.

“Unless something crazy happened in the last couple weeks, she’s down in the basement,” Hugo says. “This way.” He leads Eve through the house.

As Eve rounds the corner into the living room, she’s aware of something moving with more speed and silence than any human possibly could. It comes at her, and there’s a stabbing pain in her neck, followed by a wash of blackness.

* * *

Eve wakes up in a dark, stone room. The basement. She’s seated in a chair, and her arms are securely chained behind her back. She doesn’t have to test the chains to know they’re silver. _Phase one, according to plan. Or something._

Before her eyes are fully open, she whips her head around to look behind her, at the silver pole her arms are chained to, which is one of several poles forming a large silver cage. At the bottom of the cage sits Villanelle, crumpled in a ball, chained to the floor, and paler than death. Almost unrecognizable as the energetic, overconfident, rosy-cheeked woman Eve first met in a café months ago. As if she can feel Eve’s eyes on her, she raises her head half an inch, and stares back. Is she too weak to speak, or is there nothing she _wants_ to say?

When Eve gains the strength to pull her eyes away from Villanelle, she sees she’s surrounded by Carolyn, the other hunters poised soberly with their choice of weapons, and… Dasha, standing free, grinning smugly.

No going back now. Eve swallows and steels herself for the fight to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I saw the prompts for Killing Eve week, I was excited to find that if I kept to schedule, I'd be posting this chapter on a day with a very appropriate theme - "Eve rescues Villanelle". I know, she doesn't get to complete it in this chapter, but... stay tuned for more on that theme in the next chapter ;)
> 
> let me know what you think, or come say hi on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xoxo


	7. Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After weeks of unchanging hopelessness, Villanelle accepts her fate. Then something changes.

“Why are you crying, Oksana?”

“I’m not crying.” Villanelle shoves Nadia away, hard enough so she lands on the hard cot in their shared prison cell. It was mean, she realizes; Nadia was only reaching out. She crosses the room, and sits on the cot. She reaches out to touch Nadia. To cuddle, like Nadia always wants, except now, she keeps moving away. Farther and farther. A meter, ten meters…

Villanelle’s stomach rumbles. “When’s dinner?” she asks. Nadia turns into Anna, who laughs, a bit too loud.

“Come into the kitchen. I made cake.”

But it isn’t the cake Villanelle wants, it’s what’s pulsing underneath Anna’s skin. She grabs Anna by the arm and pulls her close. She presses their lips together, and blood starts flowing into her mouth, only no, it’s not blood – it’s too thick, and too sweet. It’s like molasses, and it’s choking her, drowning her…

She’s swallowed up by the dark, viscous sea, and hears a disembodied voice, booming… “I’ll find her and bring her here, if you double my fee…” Dasha’s voice. Villanelle’s legs ache suddenly, and she looks down to find two bear traps clenched around her. They drag her down into the ground, and she sinks down, down, down…

Villanelle wakes up. The line between dreaming and waking is especially thin these days, but she sees the basement and her cage again, so odds are, it’s reality.

She looks at her group of scratches on the floor. Twenty-six, or twenty-seven, she can’t make them out. It doesn’t matter anyway, because they’re no longer an accurate record of her stay. She lost the energy to mark the days some unknown amount of time ago.

 _Consequences_ , Dasha said, right before she betrayed Villanelle. She was right, for once.

Some other unknown amount of time ago, Villanelle finally made her peace with the fact that Eve is not coming for her. Though she’d never believed it in the first place, after informing Carolyn, a small part of her began to accept it as truth. That hope could only last so long, though.

Today, Villanelle decides she will make peace with a new fact: she is not going to escape this cage on her own.

There, that wasn’t so hard. All in a day’s work.

Indeed, an internal realization is plenty of work for a day, since Villanelle hardly moves, anymore. She’s been curled up, head on her knees, in and out of sleep for days. Even talking is a great effort. Her mouth is drier than a desert, and her lips are cracked and split. At this point, she’d kill for a glass of water, just to wet her lips, even though it wouldn’t satisfy the true thirst inside her.

Villanelle doesn’t bother to lift her head, but flicks her gaze across the room. Elena’s on duty, now. They ceased with the tests ages ago, but they still watch her.

Elena rises from her seat, and goes to the cabinet in the corner, full of weapons. She pulls out a clipboard, and begins checking boxes. Apparently watching Villanelle is so dull now that taking inventory is thrilling by comparison.

Elena runs her hand down the line of weapons: stakes, crossbows, and even a long silver-tipped pike. She takes them in her hands, one by one, checking them off on her list.

Then, the doorbell sounds. A deep ring, that resonates through Villanelle’s very bones. She doesn’t flinch at the sound, but Elena does, dropping the stake she was holding as she runs to the stairs.

Instead of listening for Elena upstairs at the door, Villanelle focuses on the stake. It skids across the floor, and comes to a rest less than a meter from her cage.

That stake becomes her whole world.

She can’t escape, but maybe, if she tries, she can grab that stake.

Villanelle stares at it for what feels like hours. She’ll only get one shot at this, since if any of the hunters return and spot it, they’ll take it out of reach, not to mention the fact that simply reaching out between the bars of the cage will take a day’s worth of energy.

Villanelle has to make her first try count. One fast, accurate grab. Get the stake. And then…

Escape.

Villanelle has never been scared of death before. She thinks back to what Dasha told her, when they roamed the forests of Russia together. How humans are scared of dying, and vampires are scared of living forever… Villanelle never put much stock into that, because she never found either prospect especially off-putting. When she was a human, she always knew she’d get through somehow. Even when she was in prison, she knew in her bones, she’d be free. She couldn’t say why she knew it, but she _knew_ it, so she was never scared or even bothered, at any point of her three years there.

Now, she’s not so sure.

But if this really is _it_ , Villanelle would much rather get it done quickly than waste away little by little. She’s not certain if she’ll ever starve, at this rate. If she’s still alive now, then the thirst may never kill her. At the very least, though, soon she’ll be too weak to even curse the hunters’ names when they stake her. Either way, it’s much better to go on her own terms.

She stares at the stake. She digs deep, for everything she has left. She gets ready to lunge.

As she’s about to reach out, she hears… Eve.

It must be a dream.

But she hasn’t dreamt of Eve at all. All her hallucinations were her mother, or prison, or Nadia, or Anna…

She strains her ears, and hears it still. A whisper, but it’s unmistakably Eve’s voice, coming from upstairs. _How? Why?_

Then, the sounds of rushing footsteps. A thump. Elena’s voice, calling for others to come help.

A minute later, Elena, Carolyn, and Jess come down into the basement. Carolyn murmurs a stream of orders, which Elena follows, pulling a chair over towards Villanelle’s cage, and pulling out a set of handcuffs. Jess is holding her baby to her chest, trying to quiet him as he cries.

Then, Konstantin, Kenny, and Hugo come down the stairs, carrying something. Carrying Eve. She’s out completely, but it’s _her._ She’s _here._

Finally, one more figure comes down the stairs behind them. Dasha. “What a fool,” she crows, hardly hiding her delight.

Villanelle thinks the same. How on Earth did Eve walk right into this? _You should have known better,_ Villanelle thinks. _But then, it has always been up to me to save us when you go rushing into trouble._

Konstantin and Kenny drag Eve’s unconscious body across the basement and plop her in the chair. They take the silver handcuffs from Elena and chain Eve’s hands behind her back, restraining her against one corner of the silver cage so she can’t move.

“Did she put up much fight?” Carolyn asks.

“It was easy. No suspicions at all. Got the needle in on the first try,” Dasha replies. “Just like you, eh, Oksana? I can see why you two make a good pair.”

Even if Villanelle had the strength to reply, she’d ignore Dasha’s goading.

“Do we take care of them both now?” Jess asks, as she puts the little sausage down in its small crib at the other end of the basement, where she always used to leave it when it was her turn to watch Villanelle.

“I think we shouldn’t rush to judgment,” Hugo says. “How do we even know for sure what we’re dealing with? We ought to wait for Eve to wake up, and give her a chance to explain herself.”

Carolyn gives a small nod to Kenny and Konstantin, who rush forward and grab Hugo from behind. He yelps in protest while the other two men tie his hands behind his back, then pull out a blindfold and earplugs.

“We had to be sure,” Carolyn says. “If you were under her control. Don’t worry; we will keep you secure from influence, and once we clean up here, you’ll be yourself again.”

“This seems extreme,” Hugo mutters, as they cover his eyes and ears.

“It should only be a few minutes.”

Villanelle realizes, this is it. Her time in this cage is almost up. Her sentence of eternity, cut short. Now that Eve is here, they have no more reason to hesitate from killing her. Eve is _here_ , not making a grand rescue – she’s in trouble, too.

Villanelle’s glad that Eve is unconscious, at least, so she won’t see Villanelle in this state. She wants Eve’s last image of her to be in her good days.

As if she could hear that thought, at that very moment, Eve begins to stir as the sedative wears off.

All the hunters shift at the sound, and clutch their bows and stakes more closely. Dasha, meanwhile, grins and puffs up, ready for a new round of taunting.

Eve groans quietly as she lifts her head, and takes in the scene in front of her. Realizing she failed. Realizing she is trapped. Realizing Dasha betrayed her. Villanelle is unfortunately well-acquainted with that feeling.

Finally, after scanning the room, Eve turns her head back. Villanelle doesn’t meet her gaze, doesn’t want to be caught looking. Doesn’t say anything, because what can she say? _Thanks for trying? Too bad you fucked up?_

Villanelle’s glad she has a good excuse not to speak. It would be too painful to say what she really means.

 _It’s supposed to be me who gets us out of this, but I can’t_ , Villanelle thinks. _I can’t save us this time, Eve_.

But this may be her only chance, so she raises her head just the slightest, to get a proper look at Eve, one last time. She’s so extremely… _herself_. Curls flying free, eyebrows knit into a concerned peak, and her blue button-down shirt is characteristically lumpy… Typical Eve, can’t even dress well for a rescue mission. Only one thing is different about her. Instead of the usual flash of fear that Villanelle has grown accustomed to seeing in Eve’s eyes in their routine life-or-death encounters, there’s something else in its place.

Reassurance.

It makes no sense. They must be in some sort of a Freaky Friday scenario, though Villanelle looks down and sees she’s still in her own body. Before she can question this reversal, Eve has turned away, and Villanelle only sees the volume of her hair spilling over the rumpled back of her shirt, as well as her hands clenched into fists where they’re chained around the corner of the cage.

“Welcome, Eve,” Carolyn says. “I wish I could say that it’s good to see you, again, though under the circumstances…”

“I think the displeasure is mutual,” Eve says.

“To some extent, you ought to feel flattered,” Carolyn says. “Though most of this came together for Villanelle’s sake, we had to adjust once we learned of your… involvement. This is much further than we’d go for any average newborn vampire.”

“Isn’t that nice.”

“There were many pieces to the plan, of course,” Carolyn continues. “If we tried to capture you with a direct offensive, we risked losing more of our own, so we had to lure you each in, allowing you to believe you were in control. Dasha was instrumental in this regard.”

Eve scoffs. “You, the ever-holy Silver League, would deign to work with a vampire?”

“For some time now, yes. Dasha and I had our first encounter, what was it, thirty-two years ago?”

She looks to Dasha for confirmation, but Dasha merely shrugs – her sense of time isn’t so strong as the passage of years mean less, as she so often told Villanelle when ranting about _eternity_.

“Thirty-two years,” Carolyn repeats. “I was a young hunter, and I cornered her well. She proposed an arrangement that might be mutually beneficial. We could remain colleagues, assist each other in mutually beneficial ways. She would never kill within the territory where I operate, and from time to time I could request her assistance on a contracted basis.”

“Which reminds me,” Dasha says. “The payment?”

Carolyn nods to Kenny, who runs up the stairs.

“So you were working with them the whole time?” Eve says. She’s gotten slower on the uptake, Villanelle thinks… Maybe the sedative is still slowing her down.

“Indeed,” Dasha says.

“Hugo…” Eve’s voice grows dry.

“He can’t hear you,” Carolyn says, pointing to Hugo’s restrained figure in the corner. “There’ll be no using your thrall to fight your battle.”

“No,” Eve murmurs. “He knew I was walking into a trap. And I thought… I didn’t order… I actually trusted him.”

“That was your mistake,” Dasha says, gleefully. “Trust is nothing, Eve Polastri. The only trust in this world is that every creature, human or vampire, is only out for what is best for itself. You should’ve learned that by now, dealing with Oksana, eh? She’s as selfish as they come.”

Villanelle opens her mouth to correct Dasha on her name, but as she makes a vain effort to wet her cracked lips, she’s distracted by a peculiar grinding sound. Quiet, even for her ears, but… _close_. She loses her train of thought completely, focusing only on what could be making that sound.

Kenny reappears with a small black bag, which he hands to Carolyn. Carolyn reaches inside, and pulls out several stacks of hundred-pound notes. She counts out the bundles in the bag, then nods, and hands the bag over to Dasha, who counts them herself.

“Thank you kindly,” Dasha says, once she’s satisfied that the bag contains the amount she expected. “It is always such a displeasure doing business with you, Carolyn.”

“You as well.”

“Fuck you,” Eve spits. Dasha receives this with a laugh.

Villanelle swallows, her throat still feeling like it’s clogged with sand, but musters all the energy in her body, to croak, “I’ll see you in hell.”

“I look forward to it.” Dasha leers down at Villanelle one final time, then turns to leave, ascending the stairs at a downright leisurely pace, chuckling as she goes.

Carolyn slowly raises her crossbow, points it at Dasha’s retreating figure, and fires. Her aim is dead on, and Dasha explodes into dust. The bag of cash falls to the steps with a thud.

“Kenny,” Carolyn says, and he goes to retrieve the money and stow it away safely.

“What…” Eve gasps.

“I’ve dreamed of doing that for thirty-two years,” Carolyn says, with just the slightest upturn of pleasure in her tone.

Villanelle is torn between satisfaction, and fury that she never got to tear Dasha to pieces herself. But she has no energy for banter, and the strange buzzing sound continues – slightly louder, now.

Villanelle looks at Eve’s hands, chained around the corner of the cage. Eve’s hands are cupped, but her fingers are moving ever so slightly. In time with the grinding sound.

Eve came here with a plan after all.

Carolyn hands her crossbow off to Jess, and takes a stake in exchange. She faces Eve directly, and addresses her. “This is not personal.”

“It is,” Eve says. “It’s personal that you kept her locked up for a month. And it’s personal because I know you guys. I know you’re good. I know you’re better than this. And you know me. I don’t want to hurt you. I only wanted to get in, take Villanelle, and get out. If you stand down, we’ll leave, and you’ll never see us again. No one has to die today.”

“I’m afraid for all her faults, Dasha was right about one thing. I cannot trust you.” Carolyn folds her hands, still wielding the stake, behind her back, and paces. “I wish it could be different, for your own sake, Eve. I wish I could take you at your word, that you mean no harm, but it is simple fact that your existence poses harm to us humans. You _will_ kill. It is your nature. I cannot fault you for it personally; you are merely following through on your biological imperative. Nevertheless, I have no choice but to stop you, given the opportunity. You are the monsters who prey upon humans. We are the heroes who slay the monsters. It is the circle of life.”

“Bullshit.” Eve flings the word like a dart. Villanelle keeps her eyes trained on Eve’s hands. Her fingers move ever so slightly, back and forth, back and forth, producing the quiet whine of metal against metal…

“I have regrets of my own, Eve,” Carolyn says. “Back in that hotel room…”

“You wish you didn’t aim that crossbow at my heart?”

“I wish I hadn’t hesitated to shoot. It would have been much better if you’d died human. If I had the strength, I could have spared you from this fate. I could have stopped you from becoming a monster like her. Call this my attempt to make up for my mistakes.”

Villanelle hardly pays attention to her speech, and listens instead for the grinding, which is growing faster and higher pitched.

Carolyn steps closer to Eve, and raises her stake. She swings it forward in a deadly arc, aimed directly at Eve’s heart. It collides with an echoing _thud_ , stopping dead on Eve’s chest.

Carolyn’s face twists into uncharacteristic confusion, but it doesn’t last long, as Eve bursts free from her chains, and with one sweep of her arm, throws Carolyn against the wall, where she crumples.

“Over the years I read so many books. Watched so many movies,” Eve says, stretching her arms, which each bear a dangling end of the severed silver chain. “I always wondered why vampires never thought to protect their _one_ weak spot.” Then, with one closed fist, she knocks on her chest, producing a metallic _thunk_. So _that’s_ why her shirt looks so lumpy.

Eve drops something to the ground, a thin piece of metal. Villanelle leans forward a few degrees, as much as she can muster the energy for, to get a closer look. It’s a comically small saw blade. Ridiculous, really. Something that must come from a specialty store; something only Eve would think of.

“What’s going on?” Hugo shouts a little too loud, stirring in his restraints. No one pays him any attention.

Recovering from their shock, the other members of the Silver League spring into action, drawing their weapons, but Eve isn’t interested in fighting them.

In a flash, Eve darts across the room, to the crib in the corner. She scoops up the little baby sausage in her arms. Then, she faces the advancing troops, and hisses, “Don’t move.”

Kenny, Elena, Konstantin, and Jess all freeze.

“Listen very carefully,” Eve says, her voice like ice. “I meant what I said. I don’t want to hurt any of you unless I have to. All you have to do is unlock the cage and free her. You give me Villanelle, I give you the baby.”

The hunters look at each other. Kenny and Elena lower their weapons. Jess takes one step forward, keeping her stake raised. “Don’t do anything rash, Eve,” she says, and Villanelle can her heart racing in her chest. “We’ll work this out. I’m gonna come close, and I’m gonna take James, alright?”

“No,” Eve says. “You let her out first. Take one more step, and I’ll kill him.”

“I don’t think you will.” The voice comes from the other corner, where Carolyn is stirring on the floor. A trickle of blood runs down her temple, and she’s only able to lift her torso. She’s clearly in pain, but she’s conscious.

“Don’t push me,” Eve says. “I don’t want to do this, but if you give me no other choice…”

“Go ahead,” Carolyn dares her.

Eve looks down at the little baby, her eyebrows climbing closer together than ever. She cradles its soft little skull in one hand. It would take hardly a twitch to end the little sausage’s life. A tiny life. A fragile life. Its heart beats so fast, cycling what little blood it has around its body over a hundred times a minute.

The little sausage didn’t do anything wrong. It didn’t ask for any of this. It doesn’t deserve to be in the middle of a fight between vampires and hunters. Villanelle knows that is what is going through Eve’s head right now, as she shuts her eyes, and places the squirming thing back in its crib. Jess lets out a tense breath, and her own heart rate drops down again.

“I knew you wouldn’t,” Carolyn says, rather pleased for someone still struggling to prop herself up on the floor.

 _I would’ve,_ Villanelle thinks. Eve’s done well so far, but maybe it’s all for nothing, if she really expects to get out of here without laying a scratch on these humans…

But before Villanelle can judge too much, the action begins. Once the baby is safely out of the way, Jess lunges for Eve with her stake. Eve grabs her arm, and tosses her aside, so she crumples against the stairs. At least Eve isn’t above self-defense.

While the others regroup, Eve runs back over towards the cage. She pulls uselessly at the door once, then, her eyes dart to the floor, searching for the tiny saw blade she came with.

Eve has to know that tiny blade won’t work on the thick bars of the cage, but the other hunters are preparing an attack, so still, she searches. Before Eve gets distracted again, Villanelle takes a heavy breath, and shifts forward. At the sound of her restraints rattling, Eve turns, immediately.

Villanelle can’t manage much, so she has to make it count. “Keys,” she rasps, then taps one hand over her heart. Eve’s eyes widen. Then, she gets it.

Like lightning, Eve falls upon Carolyn once more. Carolyn tries to push her off in vain, but Eve grabs her by the lapels and headbutts her, forehead to forehead. Eve must’ve held back, for Carolyn’s skull doesn’t crack open, but she does fall unconscious. Eve tears open Carolyn’s thick coat and rummages until she finds the inside breast pocket, and the set of silver keys inside.

While Eve rushes back and unlocks the door to the cage, Jess and the others who have bows aim the at Eve’s back, and fire a few shots. However, the wooden bolts collide harmlessly with Eve’s back and fall to the ground – Eve didn’t do anything halfway; she also hid a shield in the back of her shirt.

Eve gets the cage door open, and sets to work on the shackles around Villanelle. “I’m sorry it took so long,” she murmurs, soft as if they are next to each other on the couch, and not currently under fire by an angry mob of hunters. She unlocks the chain around Villanelle’s neck, and sets to work on her wrists.

“It’s no use,” Konstantin bellows. “We have to take care of the armor.”

Eve is so focused on fitting the silver key into the shackles on Villanelle’s ankles, she doesn’t see as Konstantin charges towards her, and reaches for her shirt.

It’s a suicide mission, Villanelle realizes. One hunter tried something similar on her, the first time she faced a group alone. He charged ahead and risked his own life in the hopes that it might occupy her enough to let the last hunter deliver a killing blow. In this case, Konstantin grasps madly at the cloth of Eve’s shirt, trying to tear away her shield, and give the others a chance to kill her.

Villanelle opens her mouth to cry out, but as soon as his hands are on Eve, she whips into action. Eve reaches behind her and in one fluid motion, pulls Konstantin into a headlock. His face turns red, then purple. Eve tucks him under her arm casually while she undoes the last lock.

As her shackles fall to the ground with a clatter, Villanelle can’t appreciate the feeling as much as she’d like to. She tells her body to stand, but the mere thought of it makes her dizzy. Instead, she ends up falling forward onto her hands and knees, with an impact that shakes her whole frame.

“Here!” Eve commands, and she holds out Konstantin.

It’s so unfathomable, that Eve should be offering him for the slaughter, after she guilted Villanelle about feeding so many times before. After she pressured Villanelle into freeing Konstantin himself. And for all the hypocrisy of it, Villanelle hesitates. Konstantin was good to her, in his way. He was a good thrall. He was her only real company for almost two years. Even here, he treated her better than Carolyn would’ve liked, sneaking her blood…

He also put a tracker on her. He also left her to rot.

It takes all the strength Villanelle has left, but she leans forward and bites into Konstantin’s neck, her mouth filling with his blood for the second time. Something about this taste hitting her lips almost two years ago made her stop. Made her want to keep him around. Made her feel like he was worth saving.

Now, it just tastes like life.

She drinks, and drinks, and drinks, and with each wet, warm, mouthful, the flicker of her soul deep in her stomach grows brighter and warmer. It reminds her of her first time – not her first hunt, but her first _drink_ , from Vladimir, the drink that condemned her to immortality. Just the same, as then, each mouthful brings her back from the brink of death, and restores her to her true self.

Konstantin falls, and Villanelle rises. She steps free from her cage, and draws herself up next to Eve. Back to back. Ready for revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> grand finale coming later this week.
> 
> let me know what you think in the comments, or listen to my wistful angst over this universe finally winding down on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xo


	8. Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve and Villanelle face the Silver League for the last time.

Eve wants nothing more than to hold Villanelle in her arms, but unfortunately, there’s a few other pressing matters at the moment.

On Villanelle’s end, she needs something else much more desperately than she needs Eve right now. She’s still latched onto Konstantin’s neck, draining his limp body of every drop of blood.

Phases one and two of Eve’s plan went about as well as she could’ve hoped. Villanelle is alive, and she’s free. Now comes the part Eve didn’t even bother to think through because she wasn’t sure she’d get this far. Phase three: get out of here without anyone else dying.

While Villanelle feeds, and the other hunters cower, Eve darts across the room to where Hugo is bound in the corner. She pulls off his blindfold, removes his earplugs, then easily rips apart the rope restraining his hands.

Hugo blinks, and takes in the scene around him, piecing together what happened. Villanelle free, Carolyn crumpled in the corner, Konstantin dead. “Holy–”

“Shh,” Eve commands him. No time to deal with his reaction. She considers, for a moment, ordering him to fight the others. Not to kill them, but at least keep them occupied while she and Villanelle escape. But she knows from experience that the Silver League wouldn’t hesitate to turn on their own if the situation demands it, and didn’t she mean what she swore to Hugo before? If she sends him to die, she’ll have to live with that for the rest of eternity.

With Carolyn out of commission, Jess steps forward as the de facto leader, raising her bow. “Step away from him.”

“Jess,” Eve says. “No one else has to get hurt here.”

“I said, step away.”

“We’re not automatically evil, you have to understand that. We freed Konstantin.”

“Yes, and now he’s dead.”

“Because you _starved_ her!” Eve snaps. Then, she stops, and steadies herself. The only sound is of Villanelle lapping up Konstantin’s blood. Eve takes a breath. “Look. You all have to know you’re outmatched, here. I’m begging you to step aside for your own good. If you let us pass, we’ll go far away. You’ll never hear from us again.”

Elena speaks up. “You expect us to send you off to murder some innocent people somewhere else?”

Eve is baffled. Why do they keep fighting? Why don’t they stand down? Why would they face against an invincible foe, knowing their death is all but certain?

 _Because they’re human_. And Eve realizes, if she were in their shoes, now, she would’ve done the same.

Eve’s mind races. How would she convince her scrappy, idealistic human self to stand down in this situation?

“We won’t kill,” Eve says quickly. “The past three months, I was living off bagged blood. It’s possible.”

Maybe it’s an empty promise, a white lie, but whatever gets them out. Jess, Elena, and Kenny look at each other, considering.

“We can do it,” Eve pleads.

“No. We can’t.”

Villanelle rises, and drops Konstantin’s limp body to the floor. She wipes blood from her mouth, and swaggers over to join Eve in the center of the basement. She looks completely different than she did a few minutes ago. Some color has returned to her skin, and her cheeks are less gaunt than before. Even her hair has regained some of its luster. But the most striking change is in her eyes: where a moment ago they were hollow and defeated, now, they burn with a cold fire. A hunger that cannot be sated by Konstantin alone.

“Carolyn was right,” Villanelle continues. “We are monsters. This can only end one way.”

Her old confidence has completely returned. Though her white shirt and olive pants are smeared with dirt and blood, she wears them like cutting-edge couture. She shoves her hands in her pockets and stares down the hunters just as cockily as she looked at Eve on the very first day their eyes met.

Eve finds herself standing between two sides that both want blood.

“Hugo,” Eve commands, her voice hoarse. “Go.”

“What?”

“Run away and don’t look back. Never come back to the Silver League. Never come back to me. Find something you love. Survive.”

Hugo just looks back at her, dumbfounded.

“That’s an order!” Eve snaps. “Run!”

His eyes are conflicted, but he has no choice. He turns and disappears up the stairs.

Eve swallows the knot in her throat, and turns back to the battle before her.

The hunters make the first move. For the first time that night, Eve feels a thrill of fear. She’s safe from their assault, with the metal panels sewn into her shirt protecting her heart, but Villanelle has no such protection.

As Jess raises her crossbow to fire the first shot, Eve throws Villanelle out of the way. The arrow catches Eve in her right arm, sinking deep into her flesh. There’s no time to whine about it, though, because Jess is loading another shot, and Kenny and Elena are readying their stakes, getting ready for a coordinated strike.

Their reflexes are no match for a vampire’s, though – even a weakened vampire. Villanelle is already preparing to pounce. There’s no shred of mercy in her eyes, which means there’s no time for Eve to be gentle. As Villanelle starts to leap for the humans, Eve knocks her across the room, so she crashes into the cabinet of weapons against the wall, rattling the contents.

This is Eve’s window to act. She descends upon the hunters herself, now, but doesn’t go for their throats. She merely knocks them each back, grabbing the weapons from their hands. She snaps Jess’s crossbow in half. Then, she takes Kenny’s and Elena’s stakes, puts the ends in her mouth, and bites off the points. She spits out a few splinters as she tosses the dull, useless pieces of wood aside.

The humans pose no danger, now. Eve turns, ready to grab Villanelle by the arm and drag her out of this basement if she has to, but Villanelle has recovered from where Eve threw her, and she’s even more enraged than before.

Before Eve can stop her, Villanelle charges. She throws Elena up against the wall, holding her by the collar. Elena screams, and Villanelle bares her teeth. Just as she’s about to bite, Eve grabs her by the shoulders and pries her away.

“Don’t!” Eve shouts, as she wraps her arms around Villanelle. “She isn’t the one behind all this.”

Villanelle snarls, and struggles in Eve’s grasp. Although Konstantin’s blood restored her, she hasn’t regained her full strength, yet, which is lucky for Eve, as she pins Villanelle’s arms back, and pulls her away so she can’t snap at Elena’s neck with her teeth.

Elena dashes back to Kenny’s side, terrified. Jess puts herself in front of the crib; evidently, if all else fails, she wants to make sure anyone who wants to hurt her baby has to get through her first.

Villanelle thrashes, trying to free herself from Eve’s grip, roaring a stream of unintelligible curses. Eve holds her tight, like a hug from behind, and presses her face next to Villanelle’s ear. “Shhh,” she whispers, like calming a child.

“Let me go!” Villanelle screams. “Let me go, Eve. I have to kill them!”

“I know,” Eve whispers. “But we have a choice now, see? You have a choice.”

“Let me go.” Villanelle’s voice drops, less of a battle cry and more of a resigned plea.

“I’m so sorry,” Eve whispers. “I’m sorry they did this, and I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner. But it doesn’t have to end like this. We can go. We can leave this. They’ll remember us, but we can forget them forever. You and me. That’s all. Just you and me.”

Finally, Villanelle’s muscles relax. Maybe she’s drained, not recovered from starvation yet, or maybe Eve words are finally getting through to her…

There’s a small clatter, and a dragging sound, from the corner. Eve hardly registers it, since all of their foes are effectively disarmed, until–

Pain. A sharp pain, and Eve’s world explodes into redness.

She tries to release Villanelle, but finds that she can’t move. Her side is on fire. She tilts her head to the side, and sees the wicked point of a long, silver spear, poking out of Villanelle’s front. It went through Eve’s lower back, below her shield, and impaled both of them clean through.

Through the red haze that swims around the edges of her vision, Eve is just able to make out a hunched shape behind her. Carolyn, clutching her head, grinning with sick satisfaction.

A flashback to the last time Eve was stabbed in the torso. This spear hurts far worse than the shard of glass that ripped through her soul, but in spite of the pain, this wound is not accompanied by the same rush of adrenaline, or lightheadedness, or the room swimming.

Eve is unbreakable. And she’s pissed.

Villanelle grabs the front of the spear and yanks it out of both of them, Eve yelps in pain as the wooden shaft goes all the way through her, but as soon as it’s out, she can feel her body already starting to work its rapid healing process.

Still, Eve bends double and staggers off balance for a moment, clutching the gaping hole in her abdomen, but for her part, Villanelle appears unaffected by the matching hole in her torso. Maybe she’s endured so much pain over the past month that it has completely ceased to faze her.

Villanelle grasps the bloody spear and stalks over to Carolyn. She swipes the spear like a baseball bat, knocking Carolyn up against the wall of the silver cage. Though she’s visibly rattled, with a trickle of blood creeping down her face, Carolyn fights to the last. She reaches out and grabs another stake that had landed on the ground by the cage.

Carolyn swings the stake, but Villanelle easily catches her wrist. She snaps the joint to the side with a tiny crunch. To her credit, Carolyn does not cry out, but Villanelle descends upon her.

She’s about to go for the kill, and Eve knows she should step in, but she feels paralyzed. Not because of the blood-soaked hole in her torso, but because if all of this, all of this pain that Villanelle has been through, and indeed, Eve too… If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s Carolyn’s.

Villanelle raises the red-coated spear high. She brings it down with frightening force, but rather than aiming for the head or heart, she brings the point down through Carolyn’s thigh, pinning her to the ground. This time, Carolyn can’t restrain a gasp of pain as the silver blade tears through her leg. The wound is bad enough she might die if left untreated… but not yet.

Villanelle drops her arms, and turns to Eve. “Your move.”

Eve steps forward. She doesn’t say a word, but somehow, Villanelle understands what she wants to do.

Together, they take Carolyn by the arms, and place into the shackles that held Villanelle mere minutes ago. Then, Villanelle steps back, cornering the other hunters to make sure they don’t try anything (though they seem thoroughly spooked, already).

Eve stands over Carolyn, trussed up in the cage she designed herself. With great effort, she manages to lift her head and look Eve in the eye – bloody, beaten, but still proud as ever.

“Do you have anything you want to say?” Eve asks.

“If you are waiting for an apology, I cannot provide one.”

“Don’t you get that we’re all doing the same thing, here?” Eve snaps. “Trying to survive.”

“Precisely.”

Eve’s not angry anymore. She’s not angry or sad or even hurt. She’s empty. She squats down, leveling to view Carolyn face to face.

“Go ahead. Kill me,” Carolyn spits. “It won’t change what you are.”

“No,” Eve replies. “But I can change what you are.”

That prompts some nervous shuffling from across the room. Villanelle interjects, “Eve, are you sure about this?”

“I’m going to give her a choice. The same choice I had.”

Eve debates for a moment, eyeing the cut in Carolyn’s thigh, already leaking a large puddle of blood. Then, she decides if she’s going to do this, she might as well do it _right._ She bites into Carolyn’s neck and drinks. She tunes in to the sound of Carolyn’s heartbeat, listening as it slows. Once it’s dangerously weak, she pulls her mouth away.

Then, Eve bites her cheek, and grabs the arrow in her right arm. She winces as she tugs it free. Blood bubbles up from the small hole, flowing at a slow trickle.

She offers her arm right in front of Carolyn’s face. “Drink or die. It’s up to you.”

Everyone in the room stares, waiting. It feels like an hour passes before Carolyn leans forward as much as the chain allows her, and presses her mouth to Eve’s arm.

“That’s what I thought,” Eve murmurs.

As Carolyn drinks, Eve chances a look around the room, to spare herself the odd sight. Elena is horrified, Kenny’s face appears absolutely blank and frozen, and Jess is more reserved, but mournful nonetheless.

Eventually, just as Eve’s starting to feel a little lightheaded herself, Carolyn’s heartbeat finally slows to a stop, and she passes out. She hangs in the shackles, mostly limp, though with an occasional spasm racking her body. Eve wonders if she looked the same, after her heart beat its last.

Eve steps away from the cage, and bends down to pick up the stake Villanelle knocked from Carolyn’s hand. She crosses the room, and Villanelle steps aside to let her address the hunters, who shrink back at her approach.

She calmly holds out the stake to Kenny. “I’m sorry about your mum. You have your own choice to make, now.”

Kenny accepts the stake tentatively. He stares down at his hands. His skin is bone-white.

Eve turns to Jess. “Whatever you decide, I recommend leaving her in those chains, because she’ll probably be a bit disoriented when she wakes up in a day or so. At least I was.”

Jess nods slowly, shell-shocked.

“If you come after us, I get it,” Eve says. “But I hope you won’t.”

Eve turns to ask Villanelle if she’s ready to go, but Villanelle is nowhere to be seen.

Eve runs up the stairs, and calls out to the empty expanse of the house. “Villanelle?”

She runs out into the night, but there’s no sign of her out on the street. Villanelle has already gone off somewhere…

A bolt of panic shoots through Eve’s body, more painful than the still-tender wound on her abdomen.

Eve follows Villanelle’s scent, which is easier than usual since there’s a trail of tiny drops of blood marking her path. After winding down a few streets, using her vampiric speed without any regard for subtlety, Eve finally comes to the end of the trail, at the Tower Bridge.

Villanelle stands out on the middle of the bridge, leaning against the railing. In all her disheveled nature, with blood on her face and caked all over her torso, she draws a few stares from passersby – as does Eve, in her similar state. However, no one’s bold enough to interfere. She stares unblinkingly out onto the water. Why does she look like she’s about to jump? The fall wouldn’t kill her… She can’t drown, but diving into the water would in fact be a good escape route… if she didn’t want to be followed.

Eve’s heart sinks. After all this, Villanelle still wants to get away from her.

But then, as if she’s finally caught a scent of her own, Villanelle turns. She looks right at Eve, and doesn’t move.

Eve comes up next to her.

Villanelle stares back out at the water. It’s a long time before she speaks.

“The breeze. It’s nice.”

Eve sighs. “Yeah, it is.” She can’t imagine what this fresh air feels like after a month of imprisonment.

Villanelle says nothing, looking down at the waves.

Eve supposes it’s her responsibility to make the first move, under the circumstances. “After all this… our fight from before seems kind of stupid, right?”

“Mmm,” Villanelle mutters.

“I’m sorry, anyway,” Eve says. “For what I said. And for giving up. You’re right, even if we have some problems, we can figure them out, we have eternity.”

“Dasha always used to say I had to learn the meaning of ‘eternity’. That I didn’t get it.” Villanelle’s face tenses, concentrating. “While I was in there, I had a lot of time to think.”

“So what’s the answer?”

“What do _you_ think?”

“Oh. Um… I think…” Eve fumbles for a response to the unexpectedly profound question. “I think… Eternity… is a chance to learn from your mistakes.”

“Hm.” Villanelle blinks.

“Your turn.”

“I used to think it meant outliving your enemies. Always having the last laugh.” Villanelle pauses, and her gaze flicks down towards the water, before finally coming back up. “Now, when I imagine eternity… All I see is your face, over and over again.”

Even with her improved senses, Eve’s not sure she heard that correctly.

Villanelle reaches out and grazes a finger along Eve’s cheek. “I love you, Eve.”

Eve is speechless. She knows she should say something, anything, at least echo the sentiment, but her mouth is frozen, slightly parted. All she can do is stare at the immortal creature before her, who looks more mortal than ever, and somehow, it suits her.

Villanelle breaks eye contact first, her gaze flicking down to her shirt. She pokes at the patch of red on her torso, wincing. Then looks to the matching wound on Eve. “It’s like looking in a mirror.”

Eve laughs. “We’re two peas in a fucked up pod, that’s for sure.”

“I’m a little sad they won’t scar.”

“We should probably clean ourselves up.” Eve holds up the remains of the silver handcuffs with that are still on her wrists. “Gotta go back to Hugo’s, get these off.”

“Do you have another tiny saw?” Villanelle scrunches up her face and pinches her fingers together, miming how small the jeweler’s saw was.

“Oh, I got bigger stuff, I just couldn’t figure out how to sneak it in with me. I’ll show you – I got a little carried away at the hardware store.”

“Handyman-Eve is cute.” Villanelle reaches out and plays with the dangling end of the silver chain. “You know, a jeweler could probably turn this into something, if we saved it.”

“Like what?”

“Like… Rings?”

Eve gives a mock gasp. “You mean you want to _settle down_?”

“Not settle.” Villanelle gazes out over the water again. “I think we will always be running.”

Eve steps up to the railing to join her. “Good.”

“Think we could find a good jeweler in Alaska?”

“I bet we just might.” Eve grins and pokes Villanelle in the side. She winces and cries out at the touch, and Eve’s already forming an apology before she notes the devilish gleam in Villanelle’s eye. It’s a good sign that she has the energy to be a little shit again.

For a few minutes, they both look out at the shining surface of the Thames. Eve’s afraid that saying anything might disturb the peace of this moment like tossing a stone into the perfectly placid surface of the water. But it gets to be too long, and Eve doesn’t want to spend all of eternity rooted in this one spot.

She takes a deep breath. “Ready to go?”

“Eve, I have to tell you something.” Villanelle turns her head and raises her eyebrows up far as they can go. “If I step away from this railing, I think I will fall over.”

Eve laughs, then offers her hand, smudged with dirt and dried blood. Villanelle takes it, and tentatively stands, though she wobbles with a wave of dizziness. Eve bends, reaches her other arm behind Villanelle’s knees, and scoops her up from the ground.

“I could get used to this,” Villanelle murmurs, as Eve carries her towards the end of the bridge, bridal-style.

“Are you okay?” Eve asks. “Seriously.”

“Yes,” Villanelle says. “Just thirsty. And sleepy.” She lets her head drop against Eve’s chest, her eyelids drooping with exhaustion.

“I’m glad,” Eve says softly, to the helpless little monster in her arms. “Because I’m not done with you yet.”

They walk, and walk, and walk, away from everything they know, towards a future they can’t imagine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This series may not be my most popular work, but it's the closest to my heart. When I started Thirst, I thought of it as a tongue in cheek, silly project, and I would've been satisfied if one other person liked it besides me. I never expected that so many people would get invested – or that I'd grow to take it so seriously myself. I mean, serious-lite, because vampires are inherently goofy, and that's why I've had such fun with this series.
> 
> I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who's followed this series, whether you joined from the start, or just read the whole thing in one go. Your energy and support made the past nine months (!!) of creating this story some of my most cherished moments of writing. Thank you, truly.
> 
> I'm gonna go cry now, but if you want to chat, you can, as always, find me on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable). For the last time, vampire girl signing off. xoxo


End file.
